On Sunday, August 25, the Ministry of Education in the regime’s government announced that it had received five thousand copies of the new school curriculum for teaching the Russian language for the seventh grade.
Deputy Minister of Education, Rami al-Dalli, said that the ministry received five thousand books for teaching the Russian language from the Russian Union of the Christian World organization. This year, one thousand copies will be distributed for the seventh grade on an experimental basis, according to the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA).
In turn, the first supervisor of the Russian language subject at the Ministry of Education, Bassam al-Tawil, explained that the book was authored through a joint committee from the Syrian and Russian Ministries of Education. It will be taught this year experimentally in the governorates of Damascus, Homs, Tartus, Latakia, As-Suwayda, and Daraa, as they are the most in teaching the Russian language in Syria.
Al-Tawil pointed out that the number of Syrian students studying the Russian language for the seventh grade is 8,500 students, but the total number of all Syrian students studying the Russian language in Syria is 39,500 students from the seventh grade to the third secondary grade in both scientific and literary branches, according to the local Al-Watan newspaper.
In another statement to the government Tishreen newspaper, al-Tawil said, “We have an agreement between us and the Russian Ministry of Education, specifically Moscow State University since 2022, to author the Russian language curriculum for the seventh grade.”
The new Russian language book was authored in 2022, but the Russian Ministry of Education, which undertook the printing of this book, delayed sending the copies to the regime’s Ministry of Education until this year.
The agreement stipulates the printing of five thousand copies this year and five thousand copies next year, with one thousand copies to be tested this year in six governorates to calibrate the book and ensure it is error-free before broader distribution, according to Tishreen newspaper.
For his part, the head of the Russian Union of the Christian World organization, Alexei Churkezov, said that the Russian books previously sent to students in Syria were not suitable for teaching methods, “so our mission was to find a joint book authored by both Russian and Syrian sides to be easy to teach, circulate, and collect the necessary information from both the Russian and Syrian sides.”
Since the 2014-2015 academic year, the Ministry of Education in the regime’s government has included the Russian language subject in the Syrian curriculum as an optional second language starting from the seventh grade.
In April 2014, the regime’s government announced the construction of the first school to teach the Russian language in the Qudsaya suburb in the Damascus countryside. A religious Russian association adopted its construction on an area of ten dunams, provided as a grant from the regime’s government to the association at that time.
In November 2020, the first kindergarten in Syria to teach the Russian language to children was opened in Aleppo city. According to Russian media, “native speakers of the language teach it to kindergarten students at the age of five.”