"The Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus will continue an active work on creating a united scientific-educational space", - marked the Minister of education and science of the Russian Federation Andrei Fursenko on October, 26, 2009, at the joint meeting of the boards of the Ministry of education and science of Russia, the Ministry of education of Belarus and the SCST of Belarus.

During the meeting the questions of forming a united educational and scientific-technological space of the Union state were discussed, and also of training specialists in the joint Belarus-Russian university and branches of the Russian institutions of higher education on the territory of the Republic of Belarus.

At the meeting the decision was made on creating a working group for elaborating suggestions on providing comparability of the documents on education given in the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus. It is suggested that the working group will prepare its suggestions by December, 1, 2009.

The sides also discussed the possibility of elaboration of a conversion table between marks of the Russian Unified state exam and marks of the Centralized test of the Republic of Belarus, which at present are not comparable. "The creation of this conversion table will allow in the perspective to accept automatically the results of both exams in Russia and Belarus", - stressed the Minister of education of the Republic of Belarus Alexander Radkov.

The sides also agreed to create a constantly functional working group on providing coordination of the common scientific-technical policy of Russia and Belarus, and also realize coordination of fundamental researches and scientific-technical elaborations on the priority directions.

In the Russian universities in 2008-2009 more than 11 thousand students from Belarus studied, who had the same rights as the Russian ones. This year in the universities of Belarus more than 2 thousand Russians study (1846 - last school-year). At present the admission for learning of the citizens of the Republic of Belarus to the universities of the Russian Federation is conducted in the form and by the results of the Unified state exam, the admission of the Russian citizens to the universities of Belarus - on the basis of the results of the Belarus centralized test. In the system of the higher education of Russia and Belarus more than 270 agreements on inter-academic cooperation are functioning, for the last two years their number has been increased twice. There are branches of the Russian state social university and Moscow state university of economics, statistics and informatics in the Republic of Belarus.

Since 2003 the "Belarus-Russian university" works, which was created on the basis of Mogilev state technical university. In the structure of the university seven faculties are included. The training of specialists is maintained on 18 specialties and 26 specializations on Belarus educational standards and six specialties which correspond to the Russian educational standards. To the university a lyceum, an architectural-building college, an institute of raising qualification and personnel retraining are included. The total number of students is more than 8 thousand people.