Head of the Presidential Council of Russian Federation for the Development of Civil Society and Human Rights (HRC) Valery Fadeev proposed amendments to the legislation prohibiting the admission of children who do not know Russian to schools, and implying the teaching of Russian to children from migrant families in special centers.
"Regarding children at school – today the law does not allow not to accept children to school. So, we need to change the law. The law should have two circumstances – not to admit children to school who do not know the Russian language, and the same law should require teaching Russian in a specialized center," Fadeev said on Wednesday at a press conference on migration legislation, Interfax reports.
He expressed confidence that the relevant changes will help "fulfill the Constitution, educate the child and give him the opportunity to study at school normally."
"The law should be changed and, as far as I know, the Ministry of Education is working on it," Fadeev added.
Answering the question about when such a norm can be adopted, he clarified: "we need to set a task so that by the next September 1, in 2024, this system would be ready."
Speaking about teaching Russian to migrant children Fadeev noted that it is necessary to create special centers. Children there should be taught Russian as a foreign language, and there should also be appropriate teachers who will know how to teach such children the language.
Training in such centers, according to Fadeev, should be at the state expense.
"The question arises – how to teach, at whose expense to teach? And there are suggestions that the centers should be commercial. I'm not sure (…) If we invite migrants and believe that our country needs them, labor migrants, then we will probably have to educate these children at the state expense. This is my position. It is not quite fair to impose additional measures and additional costs on migrant workers," he stressed.
