School Education

Most children in Belarus start school at the age of 6. All pupils must follow the basic education curriculum up to the age of 15, and the vast majority of pupils stay at school until they finish their high school education at 18.

General secondary education is the main part of the system of continuous education in Belarus. It is represented on three levels:

· primary school (first to fourth grade, six or seven to nine years of age)

· basic secondary school (fifth to ninth grade, ten to fifteen years of age) leading to incomplete secondary education

· upper secondary school (tenth and eleventh grade, sixteen to seventeen years of age), which leads to complete secondary education.

The primary and secondary level institutions sometimes function separately (predominantly in rural areas); in the city they are usually combined within one school. The academic year begins on September 1 and continues through the end of May, and they have an examination session in the ninth and eleventh grades. School operates on a quarterly schedule, with four vacations: a week in November, two weeks in early January, a week at the end of March, and two and a half or three months in the summer. Students go to school five or six days a week. The daily number of classes varies from four in primary school to six in the senior grades. Lessons last 40 or 45 minutes, with shorts breaks between classes.

The first four years of school are devoted to acquiring basic skills and habits of writing, reading, count; mastering primary knowledge of the nature, society and man; getting acquainted with principles of personal hygiene and healthy way of life.

The main objective of the primary school is not only the development of physical and intellectual capabilities of schoolchildren, ethical and moral properties of a personality, but the formation of children's steady interest to studies. The basic and secondary school is ahead, which envisages mandatory studying of subjects of the social-and-humanitarian cycle (the Belarusian and Russian languages and literatures, Foreign Language, History of Belarus and the World's History, Man and Society), natural-and-scientific cycle (Mathematics, Informatics, Geography, Biology, Physics, Chemistry) and aesthetic cycle (music, fine arts, world artistic culture), physical training and labor education.

The continuity and succession principles let schoolchildren proceed from one stage to the next one replenishing the store of their knowledge. By the way, the 10-grade assessment system of knowledge substituted the 5-grade scale several years ago in order to enhance individual approach to pupils and students.

Establishments of general secondary education are allowed to set up gymnasia classes, classes with profiled subject study, to introduce optional subjects and courses, to hold sustaining, stimulating and other types of classes. The introduction of the curriculum school component allowed to make education in senior classes of schools of general education, gymnasiums, lyceums and colleges a profiled one, directed to further education at appropriate educational institutions or to a certain sphere of labor activity. Gymnasiums provide comprehensive humanitarian education, often centered on the study of foreign languages. They are expected to have a highly qualified teaching staff, use innovative textbooks, and to have modern methods of teaching. Lyceums offer professionally oriented education and are usually affiliated with higher educational or research institutions.

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Higher Education	\|	Ex.3 Insert prepositions in the sentences.

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