SPbU’s experience to help the Kyrgyz Republic in education
The delegation of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Kyrgyz Republic has visited SPbU to discuss bilateral collaboration to develop professional and educational standards, academic mobility and distance learning.
The aim of the trip is to get insight in to the Russian education. The delegation was particularly interested in SPbU’s experience — one of the Russia’s leading universities entitled to develop its own educational standards.
“The Kyrgyz Republic is a very young country. Young people account for 40 % of its total populations, which means that about 2.5 mln people are concerned with the education. The Kyrgyz Republic is striving to develop its educational system, which explains why we are so interested in sharing experience with our neighbours”, — said the Minister of Education and Science of the Kyrgyz Republic Gulmira Kudaberdieva.
The Kyrgyz universities have a long way to go to develop the list of the graduate competences. St Petersburg University, as a university granted a special status and educating its students according to its own standards, can be of help to the Kyrgyz Republic, says the delegation.
SPbU, on its part, promised to share its experience. “Hopefully, your visit will set the ball rolling. We are interested in expanding our collaboration with the international educational and research centres, especially as Russia and the Kyrgyz Republic have long-standing partner relationship”, — said the Senior Vice-Rector of SPbU Ilia Dementiev. He added that the University could help the Ministry of Education and Science of the Kyrgyz Republic to hold the Russian language tests, preparing expert evaluations on the national qualification systems and developing on-line courses.
The SPbU’s Senior Vice-Rector for Academic, Extra-Curricular Activities and Methodological Support told about the opportunities the University offered: “Our guiding principle is that education is a proper foundation for future. In our educational standard, we are covering several professions and formulate those competences our graduates will need. Also, we, having assessed market demands, develop on-line courses. This, year, SPbU offers 67 of them: Russian and foreign languages, history, and nuclear physics to name but a few. We willingly can provide access to these courses and develop the new ones for the Kyrgyz’s students”.
At the end of the meeting, the parties agreed to share their proposals to develop collaboration and implement them to cement the academic ties between the two countries.
The visit of the Kyrgyz’s delegation is another step in fostering collaboration between SPbU and international universities in education and research. In June 2017, SPbU welcomed the delegation of the Ministry of Education of China led by the Minister Chen Baosheng. They agreed to expand collaboration: to increase the number of academic mobility programmes and joint degree programmes.
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St Petersburg University has partner relationship with many educational and research centres of the Kyrgyz Republic. In the field of the Earth sciences, SPbU collaborates with Kyrgyz State Technical University named after I. Razzakov and National Academy of Sciences of the Kyrgyz Republic.
Today, SPbU educates and prepares 30 students from the Kyrgyz Republic on the main and additional graduate and post-graduate programmes: International Relations, Earth Sciences, Economics, Medicine, and Management.