Crisis of Out-of-School Education

On April 10, 2012 seminar by the HSE Institute for Educational Studies took place. Daniel Alexandrov presented a report “Supplementary Education of Schoolchildren: First Results and Perspectives of the Research”.

On April 10, 2012 seminar by the HSE Institute for Educational Studies took place. Daniel Alexandrov, the head “Sociology in Education and Science Laboratory” (HSE - Saint-Petersburg) and research fellow of LCSR, presented a report “Supplementary Education of Schoolchildren: First Results and Perspectives of the Research”.

The study of out-of-school education was carried out upon the request of the expert group №8 “New School” of governmental project “Strategy-2020”. The research consists of three parts. The first is a survey of schoolchildren and quantitative analysis of survey data. The second is market research (telephone interviews with directors of organizations that focus on out-of-school education); the third part of the research includes in-depth interviews with children who visit different clubs or study groups and their tutors.

The study is still in progress that is why only preliminary findings were presented. Professor Alexandrov told about the results of the first part of research, namely, results of the quantitative survey. Respondents of the poll were 9th grade schoolchildren in St.Petersburg (100 schools in the sample), Tomsk (25 schools), Pskov (15 school), three small towns (Kirishi and Vsevolozhsk in Leningrad Region and Asino in Tomsk Region) and several villages. Respondents were asked about their hobbies and activities during years of schooling. For example, did they like play football, or ski, or visited different sections and study groups? For how long have they been involved in different extracurricular activities? Among others there were questions about time they spent for their activities per week or about their tutors.

One of the interesting findings of the survey is that there are no differences in types of extracurricular activities depending on residence. Both in St. Petersburg and little towns or even rural areas children have almost the same interests.

It is very popular among children to go in for sport sections. Near the half of all the residents marked that point. Education of the parents has an effect on activities of their children, but it is not very significant: students whose parents have higher education attend extracurricular classes a little more often.

Supply for extracurricular activities in schools is higher in big cities than in villages and in prestigious high schools and lyceums than in ordinary schools. “Generally speaking, possibilities for extracurricular activities depend on human capital in the community. For example, there is a settlement which has been a naval base of the Baltic Fleet for a long time and many people there have engineer education, therefore, there should be broader supply. To put it in a nutshell, there are many officers whose wives are ready to work with children”, said Daniel Alexandrov.

There are some age differences in preferred activities. Choir, singing, dancing or chess playing are popular among the youngest group of respondents; the elder children and adolescents have less interest to these activities. High school students prefer bodybuilding, fitness and other sports. We can also find some patterns in organizational structure of different activities. Typically, schoolchildren play football in the sections, but skate with friends or alone. They study music at music schools or so called Children’s Creativity Centers, but learn foreign languages with private tutor or attend classes in language schools. Schoolchildren study math at extra classes in school or with tutors.

One of the questions of the survey was about “time budget”. In other words, scholars were interested how many hours schoolchildren spend in different activities per week. Data show that children putter the most part of their leisure time in the Internet – near 11 hours. 10 hours they spend on doing their homework; little more than 8 hours they spend with friends. During almost 6 hours they watch TV or video. Clubs outside the school take 4 hours and school sections take more than 2 hours of their free time on average.

One of the research questions was about availability of certain activities to children who want to be engaged in them. There was a special question on this subject with four possible answers: because of poor health, expensiveness of classes, prohibition of parents, and absence of such classes in the city. Data shows that for small towns and villages the most frequent answer in this respect is the fourth: absence of the section or club in the area. Professor Alexandrov explained that he used Social Atlas of Russian Regions prepared by Independent Institute of Social Politics to reveal the level of infrastructural development of certain regions. All Russian communities could be classified as regions with developed social infrastructure (55-60% of total number of communities) or settlements with lack of the social infrastructure (40-45%) according to this Atlas. Professor Alexandrov concluded that “we have a situation when demand for extracurricular activities of 55% of the population can be satisfied but 45% lack such an opportunity.”

One of the questions was about the age of the children included into the survey. Professor Alexandrov explained that a special permission of parents is required to interview younger schoolchildren, so it would be very costly in terms of money and time to them in the sample.

Another question was about costs of additional education for parents. Many people consider that this sphere is very commercialized and expensive. Daniel Alexandrov answered that exact data is being processed right now, but the preliminary results show that “there is a sufficient number of free sections but they are unevenly distributed”

Boris Kupriyanov, Chair of the Department of Theory and History of Pedagogic at the Kostroma State University, told about a similar study conducted in Kostroma in 2009. Many results of these studies coincide, however, he noticed that leisure time of teenagers includes not only participation in various sections but also performances in social organizations or different clubs. He emphasized that “we should not lose sight of these sphere of child’s life”

Vladimir Sobkin, Director of Institute of Sociology in Education of the Russian Academy of Education criticized authors of the study for the lack of attention to previous investigations in this field, for example, to surveys conducted by the researchers of his Institute. He advised to look closely at results of these studies which revealed some interesting moments concerning with impact of age dynamics, gender, performance, and social differences on the structure of additional education.

Tatyana Abankina, Director of the Center for Applied Economic Research, mentioned in her comment the crisis of the additional education that is pointed out by parents and tutors. She said that “the report does not clarify the nature of the crisis”. For her opinion, according to the study, “situation seems to be acceptable“.

Summing up, Isak Froumin, Academic Adviser of the Institute for Educational Studies that commissioned the survey told about its roots. He said the following: “when we discussed the strategy of education development it became clear that there was a new trend in children life. In general, that trend was a withdrawal of children from the school. It was additional education what had organized children activities outside the school before. So we commissioned a number of studies to clarify the nature of additional education today”. Professor Froumin said that this study was worth conducting only to get the information that 45% of Russian children live under conditions of the unsatisfied demand for additional education; this is the main indicator showing that “the situation in this sphere is unacceptable”.

By Boris Sokolov