Association of Belarusian Language Informs Education Minister about Discrimination of Belarusian-speaking Students

14.04.2004.

This year the Ministry of Education began the practice of centralized state tests for school-leavers. These tests are not obligatory, but their results can influence on entering higher educational establishments.

The tasks of the tests were prepared only in Russian language, despite the fact that both Russian and Belarusian are state languages of Belarus. Frantysk Skaryna Association of Belarusian Languages states that by this the Ministry of Education violated a number of articles of the present legislation that guaranteed to students equal linguistic possibilities in the field of education (for instance, article 6 of the Law on languages and article 50 of the Constitution).

In fact, ABL passed to the Ministry of Education a note of protest concerning this fact before the beginning of the tests. In the answer, signed by the director of the Republican institute of knowledge control Mikhail Fiaskow, it was said that the tests were voluntary that’s why those who didn’t understand Russian didn’t have to be tested.

We should remind that nowadays Belarusian is the language of instruction at a quarter of Belarusian schools. Most of them are village schools to and Lukashenka promised to their graduates facilitations in entrance to higher educational establishments.

(Based on information of RFE/RL)

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