School No. 20 named after George Byron in Gyumri ranks the second in the list of Armenia’s best state primary schools for 2015, which currently has 346 students. We are talking about the school, whose students, as a rule, fluently master the English language and study at the world’s best universities: Oxford and Cambridge, and after graduation, they mainly are engaged in diplomatic and translation activities in various countries.
As a school principal for 24 years, Grigor Harutyunyan, proudly lists the names of the graduates of the school, like Samvel Mkrtchyan, who is the world renowned translator, writer and publicist, who has translated the best examples of the foreign literature known to the Armenian reader: Thomas Elliott’s “The Waste Land”, the sonnets of Shakespeare, James Joyce’s “Ulysses” and William Saroyan’s different works and other numerous authors; Armenia’s Consular in Sweden – David Manukyan, Consular in Romania – Arsen Mikaelyan, the world-famous doctor-professor Hripsime Zatikyan, who operates in the United States, and many other names.
Note that Gyumri Mayor Samvel Balasanyan is also the graduate of this school and in the meeting with foreign country ambassadors, he always stresses the fact of his graduating the school with English bias. The 65-year-old school was named after George Byron in 1990, in the beginning, it was named after Gabriel Sundukyan. “In February 1990, British journalists visited Gyumri and when they visited our school which was located in the tents after the earthquake and have asked our students how they can help them and what they want, the children had asked them to build a school for them. On February 19, 1990, the school foundation began, on June 10 of the same year, the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher attended the opening ceremony. The British journalists conveyed the request of our schoolchildren, and the British government, the Armenian community of the Great Britain, Rolls-Royce Company and various other organizations. We keep the wall of gratitude until now and we are grateful to those who have taken part in the construction of the school. At the time, our school principal was the great devotee Yervand Tadevosyan. Imagine, the tent-school transformed into a magnificent building within one year, as stated by the Britons, our school is the Europe’s most expensive school building with a value of 8 million pounds sterling. We remember how Mikhail Gorbachev carried out a provocation and did not want to ensure the security of Margaret Thatcher in Gyumri. No words to tell what hospitality was organized for Thatcher in Gyumri, the people greeted the Prime Minister of the Great Britain with joy and happiness. But the same people, seeing Gorbachev in the “Yerankyun” district in Gyumri, raised the issue of Karabakh.
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Not seeming immodest, I must say that track to diplomacy with Great Britain has commenced from our school, we have established ties since the 90-ties and many huge events are organized both here and there. Do you know that the ambassadors from different European countries are frequently visiting us and we organize joint events? We have also become a UN friend school, on December 10, the Children’s Day, I made a proposal to turn to the world’s states, the UN to protect children from acts of terrorism. Recently, our school sent its objections to the Council of Europe against the anti-Armenian resolutions. One of the founders of FLEX program is our school, our schoolchildren visit the best universities in the world under this program, when we set up this program, we were called spies but now …
Under this program, one of our former students, Lusine Manukyan, visited the US, then “Quantum”, became a presidential award winner, and now has admitted to the Oxford University. We had a graduate, Zaruhi Poghosyan, when she began to speak with Margaret Thatcher in English, the “Iron Lady” said, I would dream every Englishman speak literate English like this child, now she is a doctor of political science. Hence, it is natural that our school in in the list of the best state primary schools in Armenia,” said the school principal. Note that in 2015, the Gyumri “Academic” and “Photon” colleges rank the second and the third, respectively, in the list of Armenia’s best public high schools and colleges.
Nune AREVSHATYAN,
Photos from “Asbarez” daily
