The Ministry of Education has asked for a deferment for all teachers

Mobilization of directors and teachers stops schools

The Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation has filed a petition with the government for a deferment for school teachers from partial mobilization. Previously, against the fact that school teachers and directors were called upon, they spoke out in the HRC, the Ministry of Digital Development, teachers’ unions and the State Duma.

The fact that such a petition was submitted to the government, said Deputy Minister of Education Andrey Korneev. “We have sent the corresponding petition to the government, we are waiting for the government’s decision and we will fully promote it,” the deputy head of the department said. He clarified that the delay should apply to those teachers who fit the criteria from the list of the Ministry of Defense.

In fact, military registration and enlistment offices often blur these criteria. How else to explain, for example, the mobilization of school principals who are “deeply over 50”, a bunch of age-related diseases, but no combat experience behind them. For example, in Transbaikalia they managed to call on a director who is not only 57 years old, but also responsible for three school buildings per 1,000 students. The matter even reached the governor, but things are still there. Was it not about such cases that the head of the Human Rights Council, Valery Fadeev, spoke: one cannot call on someone who “cannot be promptly replaced at his workplace.”

Sometimes, just like an IT specialist, a machinist or a pilot, or a school director, a teacher is indispensable. Especially in the countryside. Dinar Sarvarov led as many as 7 subjects in the Buryat village of Uchpili, where there is literally no one to replace him. But the local military registration and enlistment office sent him to a preparatory center in one day. The teacher is 37 years old and has no military service experience.

Even participation in federal teacher competitions does not save – just as hastily mobilized the winner of the competition “The Best Teacher of the Native Language and Native Literature” -2022, the teacher of the Bashkir language Miras Ishdavletov. They called me as soon as I returned from the competition. “Everyone at the school is in shock. Everything happened suddenly and quickly,” Miras comments, but adds that “the mood is good.” Just as “unexpectedly and quickly” the winner of the Ural competition “Young Teacher of the Year” -2020 Ural Ishmukhametov was called. “Everyone is roaring, we don’t want to lose him, this is a teacher from God,” the parents of schoolchildren write.

Teachers calculated that most often physical education teachers and military commissars fall under partial mobilization (which is somehow understandable), but not teachers of life safety, social studies and history.

Earlier, Yana Lantratova, deputy head of the Duma Committee on Education, advocated for a deferment for school teachers. First, she turned to the Minister of Defense with a request not to call all the teachers, then she stood up for the teachers of primary and secondary schools. Maksut Shaddayev, the head of the Ministry of Digital Development, said that they should not call for informatics teachers as part of partial mobilization. Even a trilateral meeting in the State Duma was planned, but it did not happen.

“I also think that teachers should have a delay,” said Marina Savina, a history teacher at a Moscow school. We have very few male teachers. About 10 years ago they were not at all, now we risk falling into the same situation. I saw the calculations – there are about 150 thousand male teachers in the country. If you take away those who are not suitable for age, you get a completely insignificant figure. If we take history, then until 1942 teachers were not called up not only to the front, not even to military service. Volunteers went, I do not argue. But not everyone has been released yet. And the impact on rural schools is completely crushing. Therefore, I believe that there is nothing to share here: only for computer science teachers, or only for junior-high school, or even only for villages and small towns. All teachers should have a grace period.