Reforming the school network in rural areas of Russia: main stages, directions and factors

The article analyzes the processes of reducing numbers and reorganization of schools in rural areas of Russia for the period from the 1970s to 2019. Two large periods of rundown were identified. The Soviet one (early 1960s – late 1970s) is associated with programs of “regular” countryside transformation. The Russian one (from the mid ‒ 2000s to the present) began with the adoption of the Order “On restructuring of the network of educational institutions located in rural areas”. The quantitative characteristics of the process of closing schools in the RSFSR and Russia are shown. A comprehensive analysis of state documents, legal acts and orders shows their leading role in determining the directions and territorial projections of the ongoing school network transformation.
The relationship between the dynamics of school reorganization and the characteristics of rural settlement (in terms of their average population numbers) was analyzed for the Russian stage. In the period from 2002 to 2019, the most intensive reorganization of schools (reduction in the numbers from 83 to 40%) was characteristic of the least-populated regions of the European Center and the North-West and the Volga River region. Relatively stable network of villages in the European South and the disperse location of settlements in Siberia and the Far East contributed to a relatively moderate reorganization within these territories. The study showed general correspondence between the optimization solutions and the conditions of resettlement, but there are also visible deviations. It is noted that at the present stage the existing statistics overestimate the ongoing liquidation of educational institutions, since some schools are no longer considered after their transformation into a branch of the basic school (the process of reorganization). The author’s calculations show that after the formal completion of school restructuring program in 2010, the administrations of municipalities in most regions were forced to continue reducing and / or reorganizing the school network. This time the factors of “per capita financing” of educational institutions and measures for the implementation of state social policy (in particular, the level of teachers’ salaries) were complicating the functioning of small schools.

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