Yesterday the NA held hearing on the bill, as a result of the adoption of which it will become possible to open foreign language schools in Armenia. Let us say immediately that as a result no content change has taken place. The minister of education Armen Ashotyan, who was advocating for this bill with all the efforts yesterday re-joined the intention of the government and criticized the oppositionists, who are drastically against the opening of any foreign language schools in Armenia. In the meantime yesterday in the NA they didn’t as much hear the matter as addressed mutual reprimands to each other. And this happened at the academic and governmental level. And in the end it became known that the changes will take place not in the law on language but in the law on public education. And perhaps this new bill will not be included in the upcoming agenda of the NA session. As a matter of fact these discussions are reaching a level of presumptuousness and rudeness. It seems that these discussions launched from the beginning of the year have a drastically different goal, as they say they are trying to “release the steam.” It means they are trying to involve as wide strata of society as possible at various level of discussions to create a tense debate and noise around this issue. It means the government had to divert the attention of the society from a range of other issues, which was successfully done and is still being done. The founders (due to which this process started) of the international school of Dilijan stated two months ago that there is no need to change any law for the establishment of this school. Moreover, in Armenia we now have international schools and educational foundations. It means that if the goal of the government was the opening of one or two international schools (which would always be great) then it could have been done without legislative changes. As a result, our government, which is miles away from being democratic, was able to create a background and illusion of healthy debates and fail this initiative, which could have great prospects for the sector.
