DRAUGHT YEAR 2001

Lragir.am
13 may 06

In 2011 the secondary schools of Armenia will not have alumni,
announced the deputy minister of education Norayr Ghukasyan on May
11. Fortunately, it will last for only a year. The `eclipse of alumni’
is determined by the transition to eleven-year secondary education in
2001. Children who went to school in 2000 will study for 10 years and
will leave school in 2010. Children who went to school in 2001 will
study for 11 years and will leave school in 2012, and the secondary
schools will have no alumni for a year. However, it is good that the
teaching staffs learn this several years ahead. It is bad for the
alumni of 2010, however. If no one is going to leave school in 2011,
and consequently fewer students will go to universities, the income of
the school and university teachers will go down, because there will be
no one to buy presents for teachers and there will be less bribing and
presents on admittance. And since the teaching staffs learned this
years ahead, the `scrupulous’ representatives of this system will
surely try to fill the gap of this drought’ year the year that will
come before, in other words, the alumni of 2010 will have to `pay’ for
the alumni-free year too. It is also possible, however, that the
scrupulous teachers and professors start thinking for themselves in
2006, to fill in the gap of 2011 little by little. In this case, the
burden of the alumni of 2010 will be divided to the upcoming five
years.

However, it is also possible that the burden of `compensation’ is laid
on the shoulders of the alumni of the year coming after the year of
`drought’.

In other words, they may begin spending more than the alumni before
2011. In that case we may be sure that it will become a fixed price,
and will never drop. And who knows, maybe the transition to an 11-year
school education in 2001 was intended to create an artificial deficit
of alumni to cause the prices go up. In economy when they want to
increase the price of a product, they create an artificial
deficit. And we know that by a tradition of decades the system of
education has come to form a visibly essential part of the GDP of
Armenia, even though its black structure.