YEREVAN. - Tsarukyan Bloc MP, Chairman of the National Assembly (NA) Committee on Science, Education, Culture and Sport Affairs, Vardan Bostanjyan, considers the school optimization program very dangerous.

The MP told Armenian News – NEWS.am that it is fraught with a number of consequences but there is no alternative left.

“It is apparent that this will one day result in financial matters. The thing is that the number of students—unlike that of the teachers–has drastically dropped at schools.  Regardless of whether we call it an optimization or not, these relations should be regulated and organized so that we do not appear in the field of “financial dissemination,” the MP said.

According to him, having left aside the reasons, they are trying to look for solutions to the consequences.

“In any case, before reaching this point, we constantly voiced the migration, absence of workplaces, and social issues; everyone knows about them. We have unsolved issues, which have led to these sad consequences. This is a very bad thing and is fraught with consequences: pedagogues, who carry out hard work and receive low remuneration, face the issue of losing their jobs. This is a whole range of difficulties, which relate not to the construction of a railway or nuclear station, but elementary issues relating to the human life,” Bostanjyan noted.

In the MP’s words, the buildings and premises to be emptied as a result of the school optimization in their turn give rise to corruption risks: it is yet unknown what these buildings will be used for, and who they will be handed to.

“We seem to be solving one issue, which gives rise to a number of other issues containing risks. There is also the issue of going from village to another. This is a rather terrible issue, even in case of small distance in kilometers. Now how is an elementary school child supposed to cross several kilometers in cold weather to reach school? The issues are many, but at the same time if there are two students left, we cannot maintain  a school with 200-300 staff,”he noted.