Ministry of Education and Science of Tatarstan plans to allocate budget money for Yandex’s educational project
As Realnoe Vremya found out, the Ministry of Education and Science of Tatarstan has approved the procedure for granting subsidies to the Institute of Education Development for the implementation of the project “Lyceum of the Yandex Academy”. The result of using budget funds will be the achievement of 300 students this year. Currently, the draft departmental order itself is undergoing an anti-corruption audit.
Subsidies will not have exact sizes
According to the document, subsidies will be allocated from the republican budget to the Institute of Education Development, the founder of which is the Ministry of Education and Science of the republic. In order to receive it, the institution will need to send an application to the office, which is a written request in any form. It must contain a number of documents confirming the absence of overdue debts, as well as unfulfilled obligations to pay taxes and fees.
The founder, represented by the ministry, reviews the application and determines the date of transferring the funds. At the same time, it is important to note that subsidies do not have a certain size and are formed in direct dependence on the needs of the project. At the same time, all unused money will be returned back to the treasury.
The funds allocated will have to help the institution achieve the result set for 2023, namely, 300 first— and second-year students covered by the educational program “Fundamentals of Programming in Python”.
The project operates in 168 cities of Russia and abroad
As the Ministry of Education and Science of Tatarstan told Realnoe Vremya, the Yandex Academy Lyceum is an educational project of the company that provides an opportunity for schoolchildren of grades 8 and 10 to get acquainted with the basics of programming. The project was launched in 2016 in 4 pilot regions — Saratov, Tambov, Kaluga and Penza. However, as noted in the department, in the 2022 academic year, the project was already working in 168 cities of Russia and 3 cities of Kazakhstan (in total, on the basis of more than 385 educational institutions).
The project is being implemented in partnership with regional government agencies. For example, the ministry provides administrative resources, premises, equipment, information support, and also provides tuition fees for teachers.
In turn, Yandex provides a curriculum, methodological support, and also selects students and teachers. Besides, the company is engaged in professional development of teachers involved in this project.
Already 4 graduations in Tatarstan
As for training, it is conducted in the format of full-time additional education on the basis of regional educational institutions, such as children's technology parks, IT cubes, centres of additional education, universities, schools, lyceums, gymnasiums and others.
“The curriculum was developed at the School of Data Analysis, an educational organisation that is part of the Yandex group of companies. The programme is designed for two academic years and consists of two blocks — “Fundamentals of programming in Python” and “Fundamentals of Industrial Programming”. Classes are taught by teachers from the regions who have passed selection and special training, the Ministry of Education and Science of the republic explained.
The selection of educational institutions is carried out on a competitive basis. In order to get into the project, the student also needs to pass a competitive selection.
“In Tatarstan, the project was launched in October 2017 in 3 cities (Kazan, Naberezhnye Chelny, Innopolis) on the basis of 5 educational organisations. Currently, the project is being implemented on the basis of 24 sites in 13 settlements of the republic. Since 2017, 4 two-year trainings of the Yandex Academy Lyceum have been held in the region," the ministry said.
There are quite a few IT projects for schoolchildren in Tatarstan
Let us remind that in July 2022 it was reported that more than 2 thousand schoolchildren from ten pilot regions of Russia also received IT training in programming, game development and telegram bots at Innopolis University. The training was organised within the framework of the federal project “Personnel for Digital Economy” of the national programme “Digital Economy”.
2,1 thousand schoolchildren aged 14-18 from ten pilot regions — Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Republic of Sakha, Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Penza Oblast, Orenburg Oblast, Novgorod Oblast, Belgorod Oblast, Kaluga Oblast, and Tula Oblast- studied programming.
It is worth noting that the training took place in seven areas — the development of 2D games in Python, telegram bots in Python, graphical interfaces and parsers, Olympiad programming, programming in Python and Java.
