Rostov Region: disabled children from 12 municipalities start remote learning

This school year, remote learning of children-invalids within the priority national project "Education" will be available not only for the residents of the regional capital. According to Yuri Komarov, Director of the Rostov sanatorium-boarding school No. 28, where the E-Learning Centre is located, now 150 children from 12 municipalities of the region will start studying there.

Let us remind you that from September 1, 59 children (50 from Rostov and 9 from the nearby town of Bataisk) resumed their training at the Centre for Distance Learning of Children-Invalids. In 2010, the federal budget will allocate 66.8 million roubles, and the regional one will add 19.1 million for this purpose; so far, 25.2 million roubles have been consumed.

The "Caucasian Knot" correspondent was informed by Galina Snezhko, deputy director of the boarding school, the most advanced computer equipment was bought for the children.

However, making a children's workplace at home does not mean that the equipment was just gifted. The child is involved into a full training process; and the schedule is negotiated with a tutor, who is supervising, apart from all other teachers working with the pupil, the training process by visiting the child at home. The teacher keeps an electronic class logbook (there are usually two or three pupils in a class), where, like in an ordinary school, marks appear for covering the training programme.

"We've increased hours in informatics, believing that in this case we give a sort of initial professional training to our pupils", Mr Komarov said.

According to Marina Mazaeva, Deputy Minister of Education of the Rostov Region, currently talks are underway with the Southern Federal University with the aim to continue the experiment in distance learning of disabled students at this university. There is also an intention of secondary vocational schools to join the process.