Teachers and pupils in Belarus went back to school on September 1, when in our neighbouring countries situation was very anxious and dangerous. Russian teachers and pupils were under a terrorist attack.
In Latvia, many teachers, pupils and parents organised a strike because of some ethnic problems related to the education in their own language, namely Russian. New countries joined the EU and brought their problems into the new context, but we hope that these problems will have soon solved by the politicians.
In Belarus, we are passing through a structural reform. The primary and secondary school is now organised on 12 years and the marking system was changed from a scale of five to ten one. In addition, pupils and teachers go to the school five days/week, and not six days like before the reform.
During the summer holiday we attended the International iEARN Conference which was held in Kosice, Slovakia. We met representatives from 64 countries and we shared our experiences and good practices in ICT, school projects and pedagogical innovation.
This year, two schools, Gymnasium No. 4 and Secondary School No. 5 were selected by our twin Austrian school Vienna Business School to implement the project "Austria meets Belarus - Our common European future". We will go to Vienna soon to discuss the project and management issues.
This project is one of the first opportunities in our country to work with a school from the EU, through the Internet, after the collapse of the USSR. We are ready and full of energy to go on with our activities on human right education.
Taking into account our European and ICT activities, our ministry of education selected us to b e part of national experiment concerning using ICT in school, developing international cooperation and collaboration with colleagues and peers abroad. In addition, our ministry of Foreign affairs and ministry of education made a decision to recommend us to become a UNESCO school in Belarus.
Photos: Vladimir, some of his colleagues and pupils
In Belarus, we are passing through a structural reform. The primary and secondary school is now organised on 12 years and the marking system was changed from a scale of five to ten one. In addition, pupils and teachers go to the school five days/week, and not six days like before the reform.
This year, two schools, Gymnasium No. 4 and Secondary School No. 5 were selected by our twin Austrian school Vienna Business School to implement the project "Austria meets Belarus - Our common European future". We will go to Vienna soon to discuss the project and management issues.
