Georgia Education, Health, and Welfare
In 1992 Georgia retained the basic structure of education,
health, and social welfare programs established in the Soviet
era, although major reforms were being discussed. Georgia's
requests for aid from the West have included technical assistance
in streamlining its social welfare system, which heavily burdens
the economy and generally fails to help those in greatest need.
Education
Elementary school children in English class, Children's
Palace, Tbilisi
Courtesy Janet A. Koczak
In the Soviet era, the Georgian population achieved one of
the highest education levels in the Soviet Union. In 1989 some
15.1 percent of adults in Georgia had graduated from a university
or completed some other form of higher education. About 57.4
percent had completed secondary school or obtained a specialized
secondary education. Georgia also had an extensive network of 230
scientific and research institutes employing more than 70,000
people in 1990. The Soviet system of free and compulsory
schooling had eradicated illiteracy by the 1980s, and Georgia had
the Soviet Union's highest ratio of residents with a higher or
specialized secondary education.
During Soviet rule, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
(
CPSU--see
Glossary) controlled the operation of the Georgian
education system. Theoretically, education was inseparable from
politics, and the schools were deemed an important tool in
remaking society along Marxist-Leninist lines. Central ministries
for primary and secondary education and for higher and
specialized education transmitted policy decisions to the
ministries in the republics for implementation in local and
regional systems. Even at the local level, most administrators
were party members. The combination of party organs and
government agencies overseeing education at all levels formed a
huge bureaucracy that made significant reform impossible. By the
mid-1980s, an education crisis was openly recognized everywhere
in the Soviet Union.
In the early 1990s, Soviet education institutions were still
in place in Georgia, although Soviet-style political propaganda
and authoritarian teaching methods gradually disappeared. Most
Georgian children attended general school (grades one to eleven),
beginning at age seven. In 1988 some 86,400 students were
enrolled in Georgia's nineteen institutions of higher learning.
Universities are located in Batumi, Kutaisi, Sukhumi, and
Tbilisi. In the early 1990s, private education institutes began
to appear. Higher education was provided almost exclusively in
Georgian, although 25 percent of general classes were taught in a
minority language. Abkhazian and Ossetian children were taught in
their native language until fifth grade, when they began
instruction in Georgian or Russian.
Data as of March 1994
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