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Armenian schools 'running on empty'

1 September 2016 10:22 (UTC+04:00)
Armenian schools 'running on empty'

By Rashid Shirinov

Today Armenia faces catastrophic population decline due to the large-scale migration. Thousands of people leave the country every year for various reasons: unemployment, corruption, impossibility to withstand the country’s government, etc.

The situation in Armenian schools is evidence to exodus of Armenians: a number of schools fail to enroll first-graders for years– families are gone.

An especially great disappointment for Armenia is outflow of people from borderline villages, where the economic decline is the biggest and hopelessness of life is much more.

The situation in Armenia has reached such an extent that some schools of the country do not receive any first-grader for years. Armenian journalist Tatul Hakobyan recently visited border villages of Aygepar and Nerkin Karmiraghbyur and found out that only twins Arshak and Artak Anikyan will start first grade in Aygepar on September 1. The school of this village, which is closest to the Armenian-Azerbaijani borderline, will involve 48 students this year, while this figure was 170 a few years ago. Situation is even more deplorable in Nerkin Karmiraghbyur. Total number of students in its school is 75 as of this year, while the figure was up to 400 students in early ’90s.

The obtained information horrified the journalist, although it is hardly surprising – all these are a result of the unwise policy pursued by the Armenian government for last two decades.

By the way, not only the border villages of Armenia became depopulated in recent years – the whole countryside of this poor South Caucasian nation is gradually turning into a desert.

Thus, high school of the Dashtadem village in Lori region cannot release graduates for last six years, News.am states. School director Sergey Aghajanian says that a graduate will only be in 2018. Currently, the school educates just 12 students, with one to three children in each class. It seems funny that the number of teachers of the Dashtadem school exceeds the number of schoolchildren.

Moreover, Armenian media constantly state that reproduction of the population in a number of Armenian regions, particularly in Shirak and Lori, has dropped to zero rate.

All this indicate the wrong policy of Armenian government, which is busy of embezzlement of national budget rather than population’s well-being. That is why more and more Armenians together with their children leave the country in search of a better place to live.

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

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz

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