Minority Education in Armenia
Armenia: Higher Education & Sciences comments on a program to develop leadership skills among the country’s ethnic minorities. Although not a specific area of focus of the specialist blog, it then goes on to discuss the various issues relating to minority education in Armenia.
There are 11 recognized ethnic minorities in Armenia: Assyrians, Byelorussians, Georgians, Germans, Greeks, Jews, Kurds, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians and Yezidis. Yezidis who account for about 1.3% of Armenia’s population are the largest, one of the oldest, and probably the most improvished minority group.
There have been some studies on Armenia’s ethnic minorities - maybe not on all of them - in recent years. However, I am not aware of any survey done specifically on minority youth. To my knowledge, neither the Ministry of Education and Science (MES) nor the Ministry of Sport and Youth Affairs (MSYA) has done any research on this topic.
It would be interesting to know, for instance, the post-secondary participation rate (upper vocational and higher education programs) among the minorities; particularly among Yezidis and Kurds. Based on my personal impressions and taking into account the socially disadvantageous situation that most Yezidis and Kurds have, plus the language problems peculiar to them, I would confidently claim that Yezidis and Kurds have much lower rate of participation than what the national average is. I would even guess that their rate of secondary school completion is much lower than the national average. So I am sure there is a need for programs in support of these groups.
- Published:
- 08.06.08 / 10am by Onnik
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