Armenian government supports foreign-language schools

The government of Armenia has approved a bill on amending the Laws "On Language" and "On General Education". Shortly the bill will be brought to consideration of the National Assembly of Armenia.

According to Armen Ashotyan, Minister of Sciences and Education, the new law assumes to open comprehensive schools in Armenia with training in foreign languages, which will legislatively regulate and completely legalize the process.
According to Mr Ashotyan, today the country sees an essential demand for children's education in Russian-language schools, and the Ministry is closely studying all such applications.

The opponent of the legislative initiative of the Ministry of Education and Sciences is the Armenian National Congress, which stated that adoption of the legislative initiative will threaten and nullify the system of united national comprehensive schools based on the state language.

In his turn, the Armenian Ombudsman Armen Arutyunyan expressed his confidence that along with national schools, Armenia should have foreign-language schools capable to train international-level specialists.

Today Armenia has over 1450 schools. By preliminary data, it is planned to open some 25-28 secondary schools with teaching in foreign languages.