Funding for education and science in 2010 makes up 95.5 billion drams compared to 108 billion drams in 2009.
There are no salary increases foreseen for field representatives. Deputy Minister of Finance, RA Chief Treasurer Pavel Safaryan announced that he is in favor of raising everyone's salaries, but chances are slim in the coming year.
However, the budget draft literally states: "In 2010, the current state of expenditures will remain the same for the field of education, which is considered as the primary guarantee for stable development of the country, maintenance and reproduction of human capital. The primacy of education will still be considered public education, especially elementary and middle school education from the angle of raising the quality and effectiveness of services in the field."
Based on this year's budget, it is foreseen to provide elementary students with free textbooks, as well as four brand new textbooks for 11th grade students. It is also foreseen to compensate the payments for textbooks for children of needy families, provide free curricula, textbooks and other instructional materials for special schools.
Despite the sharp conditions, there has been a 12 million dram increase in the implementation of youth projects and 32.6 million drams for extracurricular programs. Head of the "Country of Law" faction Heghine Bisharyan asked about the youth projects worth 12 million drams.
It turns out that the 12 million drams will be spent on organizing intellectual games, while the extracurricular programs worth 32.6 million drams presuppose coach training. "There is money for those intellectual games. But isn't there any money to raise the salaries of scientists?" Heghine Bisharyan asked in an oratorical tone.
President of the National Assembly's standing committee on education and science Artak Davtyan reminded Pavel Safaryan that the government staff has been granted 20 million drams from the 2010 state budget for conducting economic analyses, while the National Assembly staff has not received any funding to organize a tender and elect a member of the National Commission for Television and Radio.
Pavel Safaryan was not able to respond to ARF Deputy Lilit Galstyan's questions, particularly the question on whether the sums that the Control Chamber used through violations had been recovered.
Member of the "Prosperous Armenia" party Vardan Bostanjyan told "A1+" that he justified the 25% decrease of sums to be granted to the sphere of education.
"Of course it was justified. We are in the most vulnerable situation due to the crisis and no matter how much we say that we have reduced it, the greatest grant after the sphere of defense is education. We could have taken the money from other spheres and directed it toward education, but I assure you that we would have made the situation more difficult for other significant spheres. The crisis had a very negative impact on countries like Armenia," Vardan Bostanjyan said.
