The first class of the “School of Mayors” has started at RANEPA

In the second half of November, the first stream of the “School of Mayors” started at the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, with the goal of developing a personnel management reserve at the local level. As Kommersant found out, municipalities can get into the new project only on the recommendation of the heads of regions, and they will be trained, among other things, by graduates of the “School of Governors”, which has similar goals. The expert considers the new project a logical continuation of building a “layered personnel reserve system.”

The program for the development of the municipal personnel management reserve was developed and implemented by the Higher School of Public Administration (HSPA) of the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) together with the Presidential Administration (AP). As Kommersant was told at RANEPA, everyone wishing to attend the “School of Mayors” had to receive an appropriate recommendation from the heads of regions. Out of tens of thousands of applications, governors approved 565 candidates and sent the lists to the academy. There they compiled a general rating of applicants and, on its basis, selected 160 people (85% men), who were divided into two streams of 80 students each. The first cohort began classes in the Moscow region on November 20.

To be admitted to the School of Mayors, a candidate must meet several formal criteria: higher education, at least two years of work experience in a managerial position, experience in state or municipal service. The status of a municipal deputy and implemented projects in the region were considered as an advantage. Candidates who met these criteria underwent “personal and professional diagnostics and assessment of managerial potential,” RANEPA explained.

“I found out that several other officials submitted my name, a total of 18 people from the Rostov region,” one of the participants in the first cohort of the School of Mayors, head of the Aksai city administration Evgeniy Kamfarin, told Kommersant. “Then I was tested for about four hours. and recorded a video message. As a result, out of everyone, I was the only one who passed from the region. During the selection process, they were interested in what organizations I worked for, with how many subordinates, and what positions I held. And service in the armed forces played an important role, as I understand it.”

The first training module in the second stream starts on December 6, its participant, deputy head of the city of Izberbash (Dagestan) Islam Aliyev, told Kommersant. Until then, participants in the School of Mayors must study materials remotely. “There is simply information about what management practices there are, links to legislation, presidential decrees, government regulations, laws adopted in a given situation – you need to know all this,” Mr. Aliyev noted.

As Kommersant found out, many current mayors and their deputies were selected to participate in the first two streams. Among them, for example, are the heads of Kursk and Mirny (Yakutia) Igor Kutsak and Alexey Tonkikh, the head of the executive committee of Naberezhnye Chelny (Tatarstan) Farid Salakhov, the deputy head of the administration of Derbent (Dagestan) Gadzhiamin Ramaldanov, the deputy heads of Nevyansk and Verkhnyaya Pyshma (Sverdlovsk region) Stanislav Delidov and Alexey Redin, head of the Mendeleevsky district of Tatarstan Radmir Belyaev, heads of the urban settlement of Oktyabrsky and Milkovsky municipal district of Kamchatka Igor Golovchak and Nikolay Sepko.

The training is designed for approximately eight months (until July 2024) and, as Vedomosti previously reported, includes six educational modules: “Modern trends in municipal management”, “Operational and team effectiveness”, “Strategy and development of municipalities”, “Economics and finances of municipalities”, “Economic activity and development of territories”, “Politics, elections and positioning in the media”. It is expected that participants in the “School of Mayors” will be able to work with regional heads and “immerse themselves in the profession” by completing an internship at the MFC and other municipal organizations. The program also provides cross-cutting tracks: sports and health, effective communications and teamwork.

During the training, students must visit at least five regions, RANEPA told Kommersant. In the first stream, these are Sakhalin, Stavropol Territory, Bashkiria, Tatarstan, Moscow and the Moscow Region. In addition to RANEPA, the relevant departments and state companies are responsible for each educational module: the Ministry of Economy, the Ministry of Digital Development, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Construction, the Ministry of Transport, Rosatom, Sberbank, VEB.RF, the All-Russian Association for the Development of Local Self-Government, as well as the AP and the Dialogue platform. Regions”.

In addition, graduates of the School of Governors will train local managers. Let us recall that this is the name in expert circles for the special program for the development of the personnel reserve at the Higher School of State University of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, participation in which has, in fact, become one of the prerequisites for appointment to the post of head of the region. The program is supervised by the Kremlin’s internal political bloc under the leadership of the first deputy head of the Presidential Administration Sergei Kiriyenko.

As Oleg Kondratenko, deputy director of the Higher School of State University RANEPA, explained to Kommersant, the “School of Mayors” is “a logical continuation of the personnel training ecosystem”: “Working in municipalities is a new important challenge for us, and we have specially seriously strengthened and adapted the program to this request.” And the rector of RANEPA Alexey Komissarov called the key task of the new project the implementation of “a new, modern and unified educational standard for future municipal leaders”: “We need to give them the opportunity to get acquainted with the most pressing local problems and ways to solve them, to learn from the experience of existing successful leaders, among including graduates of the School of Governors.” All this “will not only give an additional impetus to the development of the regions, but will also make the municipal service even more attractive to young people,” the rector hopes.

The creation of the “School of Mayors” is logical, especially after the “School of Governors” has shown its effectiveness, says political consultant Evgeniy Minchenko: “This is a continuation of the idea of ​​the AP and Sergei Kiriyenko to create a personnel reserve system – quite advanced, echeloned, starting from the top positions and ending municipal level.” The expert also considers the fact that governors select candidates for training to be expected: “In fact, now LSGs are being integrated into the so-called unified system of public authority. Therefore, it is obvious that mayors who are loyal to the governors go there to study—that’s how the system is now ‘designed’.”

Political scientist Alexander Kynev also considers this initiative “understandable”: “After they began to train governors, it is quite logical that mayors can be trained in the same way.” But the main troubles of local self-government today are the lack of financial resources to fulfill their powers and “extremely high turnover: a rare head of a municipality works for more than two years,” and these problems cannot be solved by personnel training alone, the expert adds.

Sabina Adleiba, corset “Kommersant”