Education in Belarus

Belarus education has played an important role in increasing the rate of literacy rate. It has made an intense contribution to bring about all round development in the political,

social and economic sphere. Belarus education is compulsory for children belonging to the age group of six to fifteen years. Belarussian is the official language and the scripts are written in the Cyrillic dialect.

The secondary education in Belarus continues for five to seven years and it starts at the age of 12 years. In the year 2000 the adult literacy was 0.6%. In the present time the government is trying to replace the Belarussian language with the Russian language. 97% of the children are enrolled to receive the primary education. In the year 1997, as many as 6,25,000 students were admitted in the primary schools. The secondary level had 1,064,700 students enrolled.

During the year 1997, the country had 4,511 pre schools, 151 state controlled secondary schools, 249 technical and vocational schools and 4820 general education schools. In all, the public education system had 2,00,000 teachers. Belarus has three universities. The Belarussian State University is the largest. It was founded in the year 1921 and is located at the capital city of Minsk. There are four polytechnic institutes and 19 educational centers. In the year 1999, 5.6% of the GDP was spent on spreading public education. Presently the education in Belarus has expanded vastly and is sure to bring out great developments in the coming future.