I have on occasion bored you with our fun in the Latvian education system and so I will again bring up the topic.
A week of so ago our little biedriba Pro Futuro was hosting an international (Sweden, Germany, Malta and Latvia) training in Jumurda on non-formal education support for people with dyslexia. While we were eating dinner and keeping an eye on the tv (translating a bit for our guests) we heard the news that the children’s rights protection agency had said that the IZM was violating the Satversme guarantee to a freed education when various schools (probably most) require that parents buy books for their kids. The next morning our friend Koķe said on 900 sekundes that this was not really the case and that parents do not have to buy books. We know for sure that we do (parents of a proud student of Babites vidusskola).
This pretty overt lie from the Minister led me to a bit of digging on the IZM web site and the stats and numbers that they put up. One really curious number is that in 2005 33382 students began 9th class. According to Diena yesterday 17501 began 12th class this year. That means that 15882 of those that began 9th class did not finish 12th. How can this be explained? Of course the biggest drop off is in those who don’t continue to 10th class (13698). Of these nearly 13700, 11342 went on to professional education. I will try and follow it out year by year, but it is tough. The long and the short of it is that we seem to drop lots of kids from education.
