In autumn, Georgia to launch project "Georgian Language for Future Success"

Starting September 1, the project "Georgian Language for Future Success" will be operating. The Ministry of Education has already completed the selection of candidates for participation in the contest for teaching positions. Selected candidates will be directed to teach Georgian language in non-Georgian schools in the districts of Kvemo Kartli, Samtskhe-Djavakheti and Kakheti.

"Any citizen, who considers Georgian as his (her) native language and who has an academic bachelor's or master's degree, is eligible for the programme. In total, about 800 candidates, who initially passed the first test of the Georgian language and literature and then an interview, took part in the contest.

Finally, 186 people had been selected," said Dmitry Shashkin, Minister of Education.

For the first time, in the coming academic year the applicants from national minorities will be accepted to the universities passing only an exam on general skills. Those, who will successfully pass the test, will attend a special one-year training programme for learning Georgian and continue studies on the specialty in Georgian. And the most successful students – 100 Armenian and 100 Azerbaijani ones – will be exempt from tuition fees, the "Georgia online" reports.

Another novelty of this academic year will be the fact that teaching of English will become mandatory in the universities of Georgia. To promote English language in schools, this year's first-formers will receive free notebooks with already installed programmes helping learning Georgian, mathematics, nature study and English.

According to the Ministry of Education, last year three thousand of such notebooks were distributed, and children "twice as quickly mastered mathematics, Georgian and English in comparison with their equals in age, who did not have such PCs," the radio station "Echo Moskvy" (Echo of Moscow) reports.