I welcome everyone.
Two accidents took place yesterday and today. One person has died in Tbilisi, during the dismantling of one of the buildings in the vicinity of Aramyants Hospital and another person has died during the disassembling of the scaffolding of a building in the nearby area of the Parliament in Kutaisi.
These issues distress me very much, as from one point of view, there has never been a construction of such a scale in the history of Georgia, against the background of so many years of inactivity and unemployment, de-qualification.
I treat this issue very carefully, as on the one hand, everything requires urgent construction, while on the other, I called Ramaz Nikolaishvili every day during the week before the completion of the Parliament construction and told him to pay attention to the safety rules.
Ramaz was in charge of the construction there, but he cannot be present on every construction in person. I saw yesterday what had happened in the hospital. The lighting was not adequate, nor were basic rules met, which was very evident.
The issue of criminal responsibility of those in charge of their safety has to be raised without question.
Nothing is more precious than life and not one life should be put at risk.
Everyone knows my position with regard to these issues and because of that I am very furious.
This accident teaches us that we need to train our specialist much better. We are creating technical institutions for the purpose of having specialists with high qualifications and not those who have no other choice and just show up at constructions.
We need to have well trained human resources, so that accidents like this do not occur in the future.
I have decided to meet you, as those pedagogues who underwent certifications have gathered here. There are 100 pedagogues present here, a live example of the fact that there are pedagogues in Georgia who have 1000 GEL salaries. We could not even think about this 3-4 years ago.
There are also top students from across all of Georgia present here. There are three great things in this hall today – pedagogues with 1000 GEL salaries, our top students and computers made in Georgia.
Everyone would say, a few years ago, that it is a product of someone’s imagination.
This is what happens when you set as an aim to do something well.
Our country is becoming different. We had the U.S. Secretary of State visiting us few days ago.
Some have said: So what, no big deal…
You know what irritates our opponents the most; certainly, the glass bridge that everyone knows has to be destroyed – as if people have no other problems but this, the Parliament building in Kutaisi, and then our Justice Houses.
The Deputy Minister of Justice Giorgi Vashadze and I gave a little tour of the Batumi Justice House to Hilary Clinton and told her about the new system. Hilary Clinton, it was her own initiative, gave a tour to the members of her delegation and foreign journalists after the meeting, and she herself acquainted them with the details that we had told her.
She could not hide her astonishment and noted that the American State Department cannot even come close to our Justice Houses.
It is often said that the U.S. and Russia are both the same. How are they the same?! The U.S. says that we need to create an army; your territories have to be freed – which Russia opposes. The U.S. says that there should be democracy and freedom in Georgia and the country has to develop.
The U.S. is investing dozens of millions of USD in Georgian schools next year. We will add to that and every single school in Georgia will be what even Europeans would wish for.
What is important is that the United States does not compel you to do anything. We have autonomy in foreign policy issues despite the fact that we basically converge on a host of issues and they never tell us what to do.
The U.S. has recognized the independence of Kosovo, but Georgia has not. They have never obliged us to do so. We believe that in terms of international law and also given the situation we are in, the recognition of Kosovo’s independence was not a right decision.
As opposed to Russia, the U.S. gives us an opportunity to have our freedom and our policy and to make decisions ourselves. While the most principal issue is that it wants you to be a successful and a developed country.
Precisely because of this we are building a technological university together with Americans, which will be the best in the post soviet space and Eastern Europe.
It will set standards for other universities and schools as well.
25 percent of students will study for free in these two technical universities – those most skilled Georgians, who do not have means to pay for their studies.
It was the Americans’ request too and of course we endorse it as well.
Hilary Clinton has talked about our youth the most. She said that the reforms carried out by these youth should be carried on.
We have gathered here today to discuss the new system of examination.
One of our most principal and important reforms seven years ago was the introduction of national exams.
The unified national exams have basically solved the problem of corruption during university exams.
It was a great achievement and the most important stage in the process of reforms.
We had no other option then, the schools were in terrible condition – teachers had a 28 GEL salary, there was no heating, there were no windows in many places. As for today, you well know in what kind of conditions they are.
There are still many places where conditions have to be improved, but we no longer have the school which we used to have.
You know better than me what problems we have faced with national exams – as the 10th, 11th, 12th graders had no sense as to what they would do at school, the main thing was to prepare for the national exams, and schools had deserted them.
What changed with the new Minister of Education Dimitry Shashkin, was that we all returned children to the schools.
It is with this mandate that I have brought this person. Dima will well remember from our first talks that the main objective was to return children to schools.
This pseudo-liberal approach – a child should do what it wants, even if he does not study, he will still develop – is a big mistake.
Nothing can develop on its own. Children need to be compelled to study. I am a parent and have been a son as well, and I was compelled to study too. They do not study without being compelled at certain stage.
Pedagogues know this well. Besides being compelled there is also an incentive – there are thousands of methods available for a child to study.
There is a need for a government level policy everywhere, on the school level, on the class level, on the subject level, on the kindergarten level…
That is why we have returned diplomas to schools, we have returned the medals for top students to schools, we have introduced the promotion system…the Olympiads had been very important, which for some reasons had been abandoned.
We have returned exams to schools and you saw that the first exams were problematic, but now we have deliberately kept the standard and for instance, if 20 percent of students failed last year, less than one percent have failed this year.
The level of natural science subjects study has especially increased.
Not only do school exams indicate this – many have chosen technical fields at the universities, as we cannot develop only through construction, tourism, the service sector and the financial sector.
If we do not created technologies, if we do not create an industry, competitive factories, we will not achieve anything, especially when we have free trade with America, which Clinton has announced.
We will have free trade with Europe; we will have free trade with our neighbor.
This means that our products will enter many countries without a custom’s tax, i.e. many will invest in opening factories here. None of the other countries have tax free trade with the U.S.: neither UK, nor France, nor Czech Republic, nor Poland, but we will have it.
Although we have begun to produce some items today, it still is not sufficient.
To create something new, we still need many educated human resources and this education starts at the age of 5, just when a child gets a computer.
We have created these school exams and this is what we got.
First, a university entrant takes 8 exams in school, and then 4 national exams.
He prepares separately for these 8 exams and separately for the remaining 4. We all know well that as a rule, a parent hires a tutor and specifically prepares his child for the national exams.
Not many can afford to hire tutors. Mainly the residents of Tbilisi Center can afford it, while in the suburbs very few can afford it, and especially in the regions basically no one can afford it.
It turned out that we have again divided into the privileged, arrogant “types” and the rest of society- those who can afford to hire tutors and the 90 percent of the remaining population. This is what the fundamental debate is about, but I will never accept this and we cannot share it through any elite approach.
Had there been no debate at the Ministry of Education for the last year and had we not made a decision in time, there would have been no national exams this year.
This year is the last year of national exams and it no longer should be the case next year.
There is no need to have double exams. People should not spend their last penny on tutors.
We have eradicated corruption, but there should no longer be a separate system to pass the entry exams. What one has not studied at school should not be on the exams – exactly this had been the main problem.
The exams will be held at schools from next year on. University entrants will pass 8 exams, which will be followed by a test in general skills and we will have a system like that of France, Germany, i.e. in the civilized countries.
Based on these results, students will enroll in all higher education institutions. Those who have already graduated from the school or failed to pass in the first year, we will create separate tests for them and they will be able to retake exams throughout the entire year.
For some reason exams were only held in summer before…pedagogues, as well as students should be able to take exams as many times as they wish throughout the year.
My son, for instance, has just taken the test, he got a very high score, SAT is a test for international universities, but he took it two or three times…
It does not constrain anyone, you take it now, you try again in a month and when you improve the result, and then you pass. Our objective is not to artificially cast away someone, is it? Our objective is to give incentive to everyone.
This concerns pedagogues as well, there are 41 thousand people taking the certification exams this year – twice the number of last year.
I know that some pedagogues have a 300 GEL salary, some even less, as they have no full hours and this is very little.
I really do not want to lie to you and say that you will have 1000 or 1500 GEL instead of 300 and you should not worry. I tell you this straightforward, you have a chance to have 1000, and some 1500 GEL, but for this you need to pass the exams.
We want our children to get a good education, but we have to increase the wage so that pedagogues have an incentive. Based on today’s reality, we should set what we can afford and if we do this, we will increase the level as well.
We need for pedagogues to pass the exams and I hope that many will pass this year.
If I am not wrong, we already have 6 thousand people, but it is only 10 percent. I hope that this number will increase drastically and we will have a great number of pedagogues who will have high salaries and we will not spare money for this. Yet, I repeat once again, we have to overcome a certain barrier for this.
As for the exams, 8 exams at school will mean that the importance of school will increase, including that of the natural science subjects.
Certainly we will surely pass Georgian as well, but there is a need to establish objective criteria in Georgian language exams.
Personally, I graduated from school with a gold medal, but the most difficult part was the exam in Georgian language and literature, as one evaluator had one idea, and another a different one.
It will not work like this!
It should be known in advance what is being evaluated positively, and there should not be any subjective attitude. We have to make this possible as well!
It is a difficult task, but an achievable one.
General skills exams are achievable in schools. We should allow children to take a short course in general skills in their last year and pass an exam at school. It will raise education levels in all subjects.
It will exclude tutoring and injustice in the next stage.
We will attain social justice and we will give children a much better-qualified education in general education schools.
This is precisely what we all have to do already from 2013.
In fact, when I promised you that we will have all schools like those in the Netherlands, Switzerland and England after the second presidential term; we will surely fulfill this promise. Despite the crisis and even a war hitting us, we are still fulfilling this promise and are establishing such a system of exams, which will endure decades.
Everything is being run through this system in Germany, England and it is a socially just system.
The system of unified national exams was a great reform back then. We had no other options then.
For instance, today we hardly manage to install air-conditioning in the exams centers on time. It is so hot there that you mess up on everything. Besides, we are talking about a person whose psyche has not been formed yet – a child. That is why; it is much wiser that he takes an exam in a familiar environment, at school, in an ordinary computerized class room, where he has spent many years.
What’s more, we will do it this year – we have to introduce high speed internet, and parents will watch their children, how they are doing on exams.
Everything has to be very transparent. We have to introduce such an exam system that a university entrant learns about his score right after the exam.
Similarly, we have to give the chance to everyone to take exams several times. There will be an examination center and you will be able to go and take the exam whenever you want.
We have very good pedagogues and we want them to have high qualifications and high salaries.
We need many qualified teachers in natural science subjects, and we are further creating the best laboratories in this field.
We can hardly find better qualified people of the existing formation. Of course, the youth will come as well – 1000 GEL salary is very attractive for university graduates.
Yet, the main thing is to give appreciation to those experienced resources that we have. We have many idealist, patriot teachers of general education schools in Georgia.
What the teachers have endured in 90s, I don’t know which employee of which system would have endured it…Had a similar thing happened in Switzerland, in the Netherlands, first the children would have been tossed out the windows, and then they would jump themselves. They would not bear psychologically what you have put up with.
What we need now is to make the system right.
It is very good that Khatia Dekanosidme has taken up this job with energy.
You know that she created the Police Academy from a scratch, but she is not a policewoman. I would like to be straight; she is a very good manager and a very intelligent person, who has a new vision.
We constantly need refreshment, nothing can stop reforms. A person might have a right vision at a certain stage, but reforms move forward, life moves on and it is always like that – we have to keep up with life’s requirements.
We do not have a right to look back. We should always look forward.
That is why I would like to once again thank you and the children for studying well, who will be given computers that have been assembled in Georgia.
I am very proud of this.
We decided to assemble a military line 4-5 years ago, as everyone had stopped supplying us with arms.
The U.S. Secretary of State has announced now, that it was the U.S. that has worked on equipping Georgia with arms. No one would give us anything four years ago. It truly is a breakthrough.
The U.S. is doing things like that in very few countries.
When we started to produce arms, we found our skilled HR, including inviting many from abroad. We have produced an anti-missile weapon, infantry battle vehicles, unmanned aerial vehicles and grenade launchers.
We started the programming of our unmanned aerial vehicles and it turned out that there are IT people and specialists of this type of work in Georgia – it is true that there are not many, but still there are some.
Then we have produced business aircraft….
It is a drop in the sea so far. Thus, we have a skill, but imagine those 5 year old children, who receive laptops and whom you will teach, they will actually turn the world upside down.
Sweden is a bit bigger country than Georgia, but it produces the best airplanes, the best communications equipment.
How is Georgia less? We will make it as well, but for this we need your help.
Our top students will get computers today, while the teachers with the best results – certificates. You are the first beneficiaries of our educational reform’s success!
Thank you for your attention.