{"id":1675,"date":"2015-08-28T14:36:05","date_gmt":"2015-08-28T14:36:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=1675"},"modified":"2015-08-28T14:36:05","modified_gmt":"2015-08-28T14:36:05","slug":"language-still-an-educational-barrier-for-georgias-minorities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=1675","title":{"rendered":"Language Still an Educational Barrier for Georgia’s Minorities"},"content":{"rendered":"

By TEONA GODERDZISHVILI*
\nInstitute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR)<\/em><\/p>\n

University enrolment is up for Armenians and Azerbaijanis, but programmes to teach them Georgian still need work.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Georgians speak a unique and complex language, and anyone planning to go to university there would do well to master it.<\/p>\n

The government provides crash-courses for secondary school-leavers whose education has been in languages other than Georgian. But the one-year courses are not long enough to take complete beginners up to the required standard.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Critics of the scheme say shortages of qualified language teachers are leaving members of ethnic minorities at a disadvantage, as they need fluent Georgian in order to succeed in higher education and later the world of work.<\/p>\n

A government programme called 1+4 is designed to give a leg up to prospective students from minority-language schools. The two main groups concerned are Azerbaijanis in the southeast and Armenians in the southwest. They mostly attend schools in which their own languages are the main teaching medium. The Armenian and Azerbaijani languages are wholly unrelated to Georgian.<\/p>\n

Under the programme, the 100 Armenian and 100 Azerbaijani students who get the best school exam marks receive a year\u2019s intensive instruction in Georgian and four years of university fully funded.<\/p>\n

For those not on the 1+4 scheme, the one-year language course costs 2,250 lari (almost 1,000 US dollars).<\/p>\n

The statistics look impressive. In 2009, the year the programme was launched, only two Azerbaijanis and three Armenians enrolled in university courses taught in Georgian, whereas the following year, the numbers were 120 and 176, respectively. Last year, they reached 563 and 283, meaning that twice as many students from these ethnic groups went to university as were included in the 1+4 scheme.<\/p>\n

But once non-native speakers go to university, some they find themselves struggling with learning complex subjects taught in Georgian. The failure rate is high.<\/p>\n

Orhan Pirvediyev, an Azerbaijani from Marneuli in eastern Georgia, was among the 100 scholarship winners, but found the one-year course difficult because there was not enough conversation with native Georgian speakers.<\/p>\n

He says that out of the 20 students who were on the 1+4 programme with him and then went to Tbilisi State University, only three are still there. Some have dropped out of university, while others have shifted to other courses taught via Russian, still widely known in this country.<\/p>\n

There are universities offering courses taught through English and Russian. Many cater for foreign students. But for local students who are not fluent in the language, this kind of course can place them at a disadvantage since Georgian is essential for most kinds of job these days.<\/p>\n

Nugzar Chitaya, head of the department for developing higher education at Georgia\u2019s education ministry, recognises that there is a high drop-out rate among the 1+4 programme students.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnofficial data based on [academic] credits show that these students are falling seriously behind,\u201d he told IWPR. \u201cOn average, the annual drop-out rate is 15 per cent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chitaya says that students who fail to reach an adequate level of Georgian in the one-year course have the option of spending another year doing it. But if they are on the 1+4 programme, this will cost them a year\u2019s state funding for their university course.<\/p>\n

Ethnic Azerbaijanis and Armenians who attend schools that use their respective languages are required to study Georgian as well. According to Chitaya, the 1+4 scheme is designed for non-natives who already have a degree of proficiency in Georgian, so if it is failing, it is really the school system that is to blame for preparing them so poorly.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn order to master Georgian in a year, school leavers need to have some knowledge of it already,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Gia Nodia is a former education minister, and he does not think the failure rate is so bad.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf 85 out of 100 participants in the 1+4 programme are overcoming the hurdles, that isn\u2019t a bad figure given the background and context. Of course 95 per cent would be better, but 85 isn\u2019t bad,\u201d he told IWPR.<\/p>\n

Nodia sees the Georgian-language \u201caccess year\u201d as a positive emulation of Western models.<\/p>\n

Since the main problem is the lack of qualified Georgian teachers in ethnic minority-language schools, he believes the government should offer incentives to some of the 1+4 scheme graduates to take up language-teaching posts in their own communities.<\/p>\n

*Teona Goderdzishvili is a student at the Georgian Institute of Public Affairs.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By TEONA GODERDZISHVILI* Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR) University enrolment is up for Armenians and Azerbaijanis, but programmes to teach them Georgian still [more >>>]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1416,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-georgia","category-georgia-minority-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1675"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1676,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1675\/revisions\/1676"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}