The Karelian parliament did not support Yabloko’s proposal to compensate teachers for the cost of distance teaching 

Press Release, 22.05.2020

The legislative assembly of Karelia refused to support the appeal of the Yabloko faction to the head of the Russian government Mikhail Mishustin on the problems of the Russian education system in the context of the coronavirus pandemic. In particular, Yabloko’s deputies proposed an additional payment for teachers compensating them from the federal budget for additional costs of distance teaching and intensification of labour in the amount of an average teacher’s salary in Karelia.

In addition, deputies from Yabloko proposed to adjust the national project Education in order to create conditions for the implementation of educational programmes using with the use of distance learning technologies in all educational institutions of  general education in the Russian Federation.

“Vladimir Putin held a meeting on education in the context of the coronavirus pandemic and emphasised that the Russian education system passed these tests with dignity. And at a meeting of the Legislative Assembly of Karelia, I said a different thing: that the Russian education system could not cope with this problem,” noted Emilia Slabunova, the author of the appeal, member of the Yabloko Federal Political Committee and Honored Teacher of Russia.

“Quite expectedly the deputies from the ruling party said a lot of words about nothing and voted against. True, the vote demonstrates a lot: four votes for, and 16 against of 28 people present, i.e. eight deputies did not vote. Conscience did not allow to vote “against”, and the party discipline to vote “for”,” Slabunova commented on the results of the vote.

“One should not be surprised at the quality of Russian education with such an attitude towards it. This will lead to the loss of a country’s competitiveness in the global community,” Emilia Slabunova added.

Deputies from the Yabloko faction in the Legislative Assembly of Karelia emphasise that, in accordance with the law, an educational information environment should be created in educational organisations, which includes many components and allows to solve all the problems of teaching, but such an environment has not been created so far. There are no conditions for teachers to work remotely. The Labour Code of the Russian Federation defines the requirements for organization of work of teachers in this format: provision of software and hardware and information security, the procedure and timing for payment of compensation for the use by remote workers of their equipment and other costs incurred, etc. Teachers’ employment contracts should contain all this, but they do not.

Earlier, Emilia Slabunova turned to the head of Karelia Arthur Parfenchikov with a proposal to make a one-time payment to Karelian teachers in the amount of 15,000 roubles, and for those who train pupils for final exams the payment should be 25,000 roubles, so that to compensate for the costs incurred by 5,165 teachers working in the education system of Karelia.