Universal education management standard to be applied in Armenia 

ArmInfo.  A unified standard for the management of pre-school, educational and extracurricular institutions will be established in Armenia. The National Assembly of  the Republic of Armenia, at a plenary session on March 26, introduced  amendments to the Law on Education in the first reading. As Deputy  Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sports of the Republic of  Armenia Araksiya Svadjyan noted in her speech, the draft law  establishes the legal, organizational and financial basis for the  activities of educational institutions. Particular attention is paid  to the requirements for teaching and administrative personnel, as  well as the mechanisms of state financing and control. The new  standard, which will be applied to the heads of pre-school,  educational and extracurricular institutions, will be in effect for  five years. The project will also improve the quality of control over  education, curricula and financing. Most of these institutions will  receive funds from the country's state budget, despite the fact that  many of them are on the balance sheet of local governments.

There are about 400 music, sports schools, and creative centers in  Armenia, where about 100 thousand children study.

About 5 thousand teachers teach there. Over 2 thousand coaches and  teachers are employed in 174 sports schools alone. The new standard  will be extended to all these institutions. The description of the  innovation will be quite large-scale, it will allow to form a list of  teacher positions, which will help to understand what services they  can provide to students.

An important innovation will be the introduction of a single  certification procedure for directors for all three types of  institutions.

Earlier, the head of the Ministry of Education and Science of the  Republic of Armenia Zhanna Andreasyan noted that within the framework  of the voluntary certification program in extracurricular education,  launched in 2023, 465 teachers and coaches took part in it last year  - twice as many as in the previous year.  206 specialists who passed  the certification receive bonuses from the state budget in the amount  of 60-100 thousand drams. The project covers 12 sports and 8 areas of  art, including music education and fine arts.  According to the  minister, this helps solve the problem of attracting specialists to  the field of extracurricular education and support communities where  local budgets are limited.