Highlights of Andrei Fursenko's speech at the opening ceremony of the meeting of SCO education ministers on October 23, 2008

Astana, October 23, 2008

Good afternoon,

I am sincerely pleased to see you once again during this meeting of SCO member-states' education ministers. According to the agenda, we will first sum up our accomplishments since the previous meeting and then we will plan further measures aimed at expanding cooperation between SCO member-states in education.

Most of the measures to realize an inter-governmental SCO agreement on education cooperation in 2007-2008 have been implemented.

Joint multilateral efforts were successfully supplemented and bolstered by numerous projects within bilateral education contacts.

Russia attaches priority to expanded integration in the SCO zone, to implementing top-level agreements on expanded humanitarian cooperation and fulfilling its agreed upon commitments.

The Russian Education and Science Ministry has facilitated regulatory and science-methodological support for SCO member-states' cooperation in the field of education. A database highlighting the state and development trends of SCO member-states' national education systems was created.

We have monitored partner-countries' state-language studies at SCO member-states' universities and organizations. Such work has created favorable conditions for exchanging information of mutual interest, adopting agreed-upon decisions on defining and specifying high-priority cooperation venues and formulating the most important joint projects.

Russia has hosted a number of events, including the international conference "Ways of Harmonizing Higher-Education Systems of SCO Member-States" and a meeting of SCO-university representatives that discussed ways of improving training standards under higher-education curricula.

These events, as well as a forum of SCO member-states' Russian-language teachers at the Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University in Bishkek were designed to improve education standards and to expand academic mobility.

SCO Education Week, held under the motto "Education Without Borders" during Russia's 2008-2009 presidency in the SCO, was held to facilitate the exchange of concepts for the latest modernization of state education systems, the introduction of state-of-the-art education technologies and innovative projects.

In effect, the Education Week became the first major forum involving SCO scientists and educators and made a number of scientifically sound proposals and recommendations concerning expanded cooperation in education.

I believe it would be appropriate to continue holding such events.

At the same time, I would like to thank SCO Education Ministries, university-faculty representatives and all concerned parties for their active involvement in preparing and holding Education Week.
As far as bilateral relations are concerned, Russian universities admit increasingly more undergraduate and post-graduate students from SCO member-states and will continue to do so in the future.

We are rendering support to the work of Russian national (Slavic) universities in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. We continue to open subsidiaries of leading Russian universities in partner countries.

The Russian-Chinese portal RUSCHINA has been established in Russia to promote cooperation between Russian and Chinese organizations. A system of online education continues to develop. We are using federal allocations to promote Russian-language studies in SCO countries.

First, we must offer methods and recommendations and supply textbooks to those studying Russian. We highly appreciate the contribution to integration being made by our partners from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. We have achieved stronger cooperation between our ministries and also mutually beneficial contacts between educational centers of the SCO, which is particularly valuable.

At the same time, we have laid a foundation for further progress. Steps toward converting our economies to innovation-based strategies in our countries set ever changing requirements for the modernization of national systems of education and, in view of SCO's objectives, to better cooperation in this field. So allow me to describe some of the goals facing the Russian system of education.

Currently, we are in the final stages of preparing a draft program for the comprehensive modernization of education through 2012. The strategic goal is to shape a contemporary model of education as one factor determining the transition to a new level of development.

In deadlines, tasks and key points, the program is synchronized with the concept for long-term social and economic development of Russia through 2020.

The program's priorities include: establishing education as an institution of social progress, developing basic education, creating a modern and flexible system of lifelong education, and providing state guarantees for the first three priorities.

Each of these four main objectives requires many measures.

The program will be used as a template for formulating a new and integrated legislative act on education. The act is expected to outline all key changes and trends in education signposting strategic development.

Interested consultations between our ministries, a deeper comparative analysis of modernization of national systems of education will highlight the principal points of contact and help determine strategic avenues of development between SCO member-countries. This must become one of the main points of cooperation between our ministries.

Regarding the tasks for cooperation over the next two years, it is necessary to hasten the signing of an inter-governmental agreement on the mutual recognition of education certificates, which is one of the main conditions for a greater mobility of academic cadres and for providing personnel for joint SCO projects in the economic and humanitarian fields.

A standing task is to cover cooperation in the media and to develop a database on educational systems in SCO member-countries.

A matter of principle remains the improvement of quality of education, creation of shared educational programs and innovatory projects in different areas of education. Increased focus must be placed on the integration of education and science both in writing curricula and in the economic performance of colleges and universities, including establishment of such structures as technology parks and innovation centers.

We should expand and improve the methods of teaching languages spoken in the SCO countries as foreign languages. The development of college-to-college contacts deserves our serious attention. The forum of leading SCO universities rectors is to play an important role in this process. That places urgency on the opening of an SCO University as scheduled.

The agenda provides for a discussion of these items in one form or another.

I am sure that the decisions and recommendations to be adopted will make a worthy contribution to a common education format for SCO member-countries.

I wish every success to our common effort in the spirit of friendship and understanding.