Ministry of Education: Chechnya sees acute shortage of teachers

Chechnya suffers from deficit of educational institutions and lacks teachers. By the new school year the Republic's schools have more than 800 vacancies, the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent was told by a source from the Ministry of Education and Sciences of Chechnya.

"Today, our republic operates 441 educational institutions capable to house 165,000 pupils. However, on September 1 about 220,000 schoolchildren will go to school. To ensure a normal learning process, we need at least 100 new schools more," said the source and added: "Now, we have 885 teacher vacancies. It is a very serious problem for the entire education system. Young people do not seek to become teachers, even if they have appropriate education," said the source from the Ministry of Education.

Teachers themselves believe that young people are mainly distracted by low salaries.

"Our average salary is 7-8,000 roubles a month. This money is barely enough to feed a family of three. They promised to add 30 percent in the new school year, but even then it won't be high enough to interest the youth. Besides, we should take into account our national mentality. Teaching was never a prestigious profession in Chechnya. I'm not talking about how hard it is to work with our children," said a teacher from one Grozny school in this regard.

According to her story, teachers have no serious incentives to work properly.