Statistics games: who needed fraud with data on Russian teachers?

“There are three types of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics,” – we cannot completely agree with this phrase of the American writer Mark Twain. The point here is that statistics in itself is an exact science, but how it can be interpreted is a different question. An analogy can be drawn with a polygraph, where the interpretation of the test subject’s answers no longer depends on a soulless machine with sensors, but on the operator working on it. We know stories when statistics are “twisted” as conveniently as possible. One of them may unfold right now before our eyes.

For example, news appeared on some dubious resources with reference to analytical reports from government agencies, saying that a record number of teachers quit in Russia in 2023. It really does sound scandalous, yes, only if you trust everything that is said without going into details.

Watch your hands. On the website of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation, as on any official website of a government agency, there is a section “Statistics”. And if you take these statistics with inept hands, you can conjure unpleasant conclusions, or, more precisely, real misinformation. So, for example, you can take data on the attrition of the teaching staff, without going into details teacher-non-teacher (and we are talking about teaching staff in general – these include educational psychologists, and speech therapists, and additional education teachers, and tutors, and trainers in physical education and many others), as well as dismissing the difference between attrition due to transfer to a new school, to a new position or dismissal, retirement, and anything else, and with each step of calculations these increasingly unreliable data are compared with other years. Voila, the conclusion “Oh! God, we’re all going to die” ready!

“I have been working at the gymnasium for the 23rd year now, and all the statistics on the hiring and dismissal of colleagues are happening before our eyes.” I can say that in our city the reasons for layoffs are usually domestic. For example, last year several young teachers got married and moved with their husbands to another region. Or colleagues go on maternity leave, and a new teacher is hired in their place, and when they return, the teachers are transferred. Formally this will be “dismissal”, but in reality it will not. Again, Krasnodar is actively developing, new areas are being built, and schools in them. Some teachers are transferred to them, closer to home,” says Lilia Kazantseva, geography teacher at gymnasium No. 18, Krasnodar.

Indeed, the reasons for reducing the number of employees can be very different: real layoffs, staff reductions (during the merger of schools, for example), teachers combining positions. There are probably many more options for reducing the number of workers reflected in these statistics.

Nevertheless, the craftsmen “pulled an owl on the globe” and produced figures that supposedly indicate a “trend” towards dismissal.

By the way, another subtle point that clearly shows the expertise of statistical fraudsters is that the official statistics reflect the number of dropouts during the previous academic year. That is, not for 2023, but the number of retired teaching staff during the 2022/23 academic year. And the cherry is that there is an actual real record in the data. Literally in the next column. Those who like to disperse panic have kept silent about it; the same 2022/23 academic year is not only a high level in the number of dropouts, but also a record for the number of hired teaching staff, including teachers. And more were accepted than dropped out, namely 198 thousand. And these numbers are in the same table, on the same website.

“As for layoffs, I, as a member of the Association of Teachers of the Leningrad Region, cannot confirm this trend. On the contrary, there are more and more young teachers. For example, 50 teachers came to the school where I work for more than 4,000 thousand children last September. We see that the profession is becoming more and more in demand. In the Leningrad region there are now more than 25 thousand teachers, and if we take together other teaching staff – more than 50 thousand. And this figure is growing every year, as is the importance of our beloved and special profession, which raises the future generation of our great country! » Leningrad region Maria Timchenko.

An interesting picture emerges. There can only be two answers to the question of where this stuff came from. The first – the journalist who first published his brilliant analysis must return to school. Learn to count first, and then take a logic course. At least for the fifth grade, fortunately this subject was recently introduced in schools. The second is that if statistics are adjusted to some conclusions, it means that someone needs it. This is already worse; our law enforcement agencies need to think about this.