Education

• Lenin set up the Commissariat of the Enlightenment which provided free education. Old gimnazii schools replaced with schools providing both vocational and general education.
• Physical education given greater importance. Exams and textbooks abolished as Communist versions we not yet available.
• Fair amount of freedom, creativity and individualism was permitted whereas physical punishment banned.
• Under Stalin some more liberal trends were reversed.
• More ‘practical work’ encouraged as the Five Year Plans began and more formal teaching deemed necessary. Schools became the responsibility of collective farms or town enterprises.
• Universities were seen as vital for growth so were put under control of the Veshenka.
• Rigid academic curriculum set up and nationalism and military education introduced before the war.
• Quota system of students abandoned in 1935 and selection for all classes reappeared.
• Stakhanovite movement extended to teachers and they could be purged if they underperformed.
• By 1941, 94% were literate in towns and 86% in the countryside
• USSR produced particularly strong science graduates and education was a vehicle for social mobility although it declined when the quota system was abandoned.