Abstract:

The Russian Federation (RF) is a large country with the total area of 17,075,400 sq km. The RF has the world’s ninth-largest population of 146,600,000 people. According to the 2010 census, ethnic Russian people constitute up to 81% of the total population. In total, over 185 different ethnic groups live within the RF borders. Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism are Russia’s traditional religions. Russia is a multinational and multicultural state.

The large number of different ethnic groups represents the result of a complicated history of migrations, wars and revolutions. The ethnic diversity of Russia has significantly influenced the nature of its development and has had a strong influence on the state education policy. The article gives a detailed analysis of the key factors determining educational opportunities for different RF ethnic groups. A complicated ethnic composition of Russia’s population and its multi-confessional nature cause the educational system to fulfill educational, ethno-cultural and consolidating functions by enriching the educational content with ethnic peculiarities and at the same time providing students with an opportunity to study both in native (non-Russian) and non-native (Russian) languages.

The abstract provides clear and thorough description of Russian educational system emphasizing positive features like high literacy and educational rates especially in technical areas that are due to the results of the educational system functioning nowadays. Teacher education is provided in different types of educational institutions allowing their graduates to start working as teachers immediately after graduating. Ethnic groups can influence educational policy of the state but mainly in the area of non-formal education. In terms of curriculum policy there has lately been a tendency of reinforcing the federal control in terms of educational content due to numerous influencing factors. Despite these centralizing tendencies multicultural approach has been applied to the curriculum thus emphasizing the contradictions of Russian educational policy concerning ethnic issues.

Keywords:

Ethnic groups, ethnic languages, educational system, teacher education, curriculum policy.