Measures to Promote Languages and Vocational School Education Defined

On January 20, an extended meeting on developing foreign languages teaching and vocational training at schools was held.

President Shavkat Mirziyoyev paid a particular attention to the principle of «social state» in his Address to the people of our country, noting that social state means, primarily, creating equal opportunities for people to realize their potential and necessary conditions for their decent life and poverty reduction.

The most important basis for achieving this goal is education. Therefore, the Address identifies as a priority task the teaching schoolchildren at least two foreign languages and one profession.

Over the past few years, the attention to education and teachers has grown, the admission quota and the number of study fields in higher education institutions have increased. However, the quality of school education has not yet reached the appropriate level. For instance, the majority of children, who have studied at school for 11 years, do not know a foreign language perfectly upon graduating. Due to the lack of conditions and specialists, students do not acquire an interest in professions. At present, a half of school graduates enter the labor market without any professional skills.

In this regard, the issues on improving the quality of teaching foreign languages and professional orientation of students discussed at the meeting.

«A child who has mastered a profession and language at school represents a great achievement of our society», Shavkat Mirziyoyev has said.

One city and two districts in each region were selected to implement this system. The conditions, teachers' qualifications, students' interest in professions and foreign languages were studied in more than 2,000 schools.

Currently, it is planned to organize training in 64 types of working professions in these schools based on features of the district and makhallas (local neighborhood community areas).

The khokims (governors) have been tasked to organize the required materials, equip and provide vocational workshops of the selected schools with them. Youth leaders and entrepreneurs will be involved and funds will be allocated from the Youth Support Fund.

«Currently, entrepreneurs and manufacturers are concerned about the issue: there are a lot of jobs available, the salaries are good, but there are no qualified and skilled workers. If this system is properly organized, taking into account our demographic growth, we can achieve great results», the President has mentioned.

The importance of training students for modern occupations in the field of information technology and creative industries was also emphasized.

The instructions were given to attract native speaker teachers to schools, and introduce the experience, textbooks and programs for teaching languages at Presidential schools for providing quality foreign languages teaching.

At the meeting, regional khokims (governors) presented information on plans for developing foreign languages teaching and vocational training based on selected schools.

In addition, the President pointed out to the heads of industries and regions the need to increase responsibility and control over the stable provision of population with energy resources during a winter season. The corresponding instructions were given to closely assist entrepreneurs and enterprises in solving pressing issues of their activities, if necessary - allocating financial resources to them, preventing unreasonable growth of prices of food products and a boost in market supply.