Education Corruption

Missing Money!

A PROMINENT EX-ADMINISTRATOR UNDER INVESTIGATION

By Stephen Wilson

Marina Rakova, former Dep. Minister of Education
wanted for stealing education money.

Education corruption is now a big topic in Russia after the former Deputy Minister of Education Marina Rakova was charged with fraud after she lobbied for funding an education project while a government official and then went to work for Sberbank to profit off her government work. She is thought to be hiding in Ukraine after an arrest warrant was issued.

 

Ravkova is suspected of illicitly taking funds for a program she pushed called 'Teacher of the Future.' 

This project was one of many which fell under the hugely ambitious state project, 'Education', which aims to make Russian Education 'globally competitive' and teach patriotism and social responsibility. The project included a tech component.

They aimed to improve the qualifications and training of 50% of school teachers. They also aim to make teaching a more alluring and attractive profession for young school children. For example, in one school, children might be invited to take part in an essay competition titled 'Why I want to be a school teacher.' The winner receives a certificate and prizes. 

One of the aims of the project was to open 225 centers in Russia aimed at raising the professional competence of teachers. Such a grandiose and ambitious project has been widely funded by the Russian government.

But government officials/private business people at the top purely look at how much money they can make off of it. Other top officials were arrested including one who had served as the executive director of the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences.

In 2019, then Deputy Minister of Education Marina Rakova lobbied for the allocation of state budget money for the Foundation for New Forms of Education Development that she used to head, based on the Teacher of the Future federal program that shaped part of the Education National Project. At the time, the fund was headed by Inkin, who now is a division managing director at Sberbank, while Zak is the director of the Moscow division of Sberbank's Digital Education Platform. According to investigators, Inkin and two other defendants embezzled the allocated funds. 

 

What offends many school teachers is why does the state invest so much money in grandiose schemes such as a master class workshop in 'How to love your school students.' or the latest fad in methodology when teachers are so low paid and overworked? 

 

Only recently, President Putin made a speech where he declared that school students were doing too much homework and teachers were being forced to do far too much paper work. Pupils and teachers are over tested and overworked. 

 

Acknowledged source Vladislav Trifonov, Kommersant, 30th September, 2021,number 177, TASS