Azernews.Az

By Rashid Shirinov

As the economic chaos in Armenia deepens, the crisis continues to deprive Armenian kids of education. Some children in this poor country have never been inside a classroom, while others were forced to leave to earn for life.

The recent data revealed by the Armenian National Statistical Reporting Service show that only 91.6 percent of Armenian children were able to go to school by late 2015.

In other words, 8.4 percent of school-age children in Armenia do not receive education at the moment, Armenian newspaper Zhoghovurd reports.

In 2011, as much as 99 percent of school-age children were enrolled in primary classes in Armenia. However, in further years the number of children deprived from attending school gradually increased, and currently it reaches an unprecedented for Armenia indicator.

Another problem of the Armenian education system is that the number of teachers in the educational institutions is steadily declining. And this applies to both public and private schools. The number of teachers reduced comparatively slowly, but lately the pace has accelerated, Armenian newspaper Haykakan Zhamanak states.

Thus, in 2011-2012 academic years 40,715 teachers worked in public schools operating in Armenia; for 2012-2013 the figure was 39,566. Further, in 2013-2014 the number decreased to 38,483 active teachers, and 37,560 in 2014-2015. That means about 1,000 people were being dismissed every year.

But the data of the last academic year shows that the number of fired teachers decreased by approximately 2,000 people in 2015-2016 – currently only 35,972 teachers work in the Armenian public schools.

The share of the spending on education has also decreased. From 2007 to 2013 the percentage of the spending on education has decreased from 14.98% to 9.02% as percentages of the state budget expenditures.

Back in 2013, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child expressed concerns about the significant reduction of budget allocated to the education and health care sectors (from 2.1% in 2007 to 1.5% in 2012, and from 3.2% in 2010 to 2.5% in 2012), as well as a lack of information on the approach based on the rights of the child.

Experts warn that if the reduction trend continues then Armenia risks to have even more uneducated people.

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Rashid Shirinov is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @RashidShirinov

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