“For the sake of education and science” NGO has conducted “The education budget cracks in the context of efficiency and transparency” survey, as a result of which a set of drawbacks were revealed.
According to the survey, 765 million AMD was provided for publishing text-books every year by the Ministry of Education budget in 2010 and 2011. The survey conducted among teachers shows that text-books have not undergone due examination and are published with editorial, spelling and printing mistakes.
The National Institute of Education (NIE) spends more than a half of its budget on training teachers and methodological tests, however it doesn’t guarantee appropriate quality. The results of the survey on the official website of NIE testify to the fact that the main part of accreditation process is found inefficient.
NGO projects that are financed by the education budget are rather interesting. In 2010-2012, the Ministry of Education has given 365 million AMD to the same 7 NGOs for implementing the same projects. 38% of the whole sum is given to only one organization, “Support for Classical Music” NGO, the activities of which are more related to the scientific field. The rest of organizations and the projects implemented by them are also more related to sports and science and it is arguable why those should be financed by the education section of the budget and not by science or sports ones.
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The Ministry of Education spends considerable amount of money every year on preparing and publishing text-books. 764.649.600 AMD was provided by the education budget in years 2010 and 2011. According to surveys and examinations conducted by them, the quality of some of the newly-published text-books is rather low. There is a misprint on the 12th-grade “French” textbook cover – it is printed “Française” instead of “Français”. Children confuse them all the time and make the same spelling mistake. In order to avoid it, the teachers have told the children to either erase the unnecessary letter or paste a piece of paper to it.
“If the ministry provides money from the budget to prepare and publish text-books, but they are published with serious visible mistakes and are changed every year, can this not be perceived as a result of inefficient spending of the budget money and the lack of respective supervising mechanisms?” reads the survey.
