Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin signed a provision on the coordination of an interschool tutorial centers contest, the spokesperson for the Governor reports. There are currently fifty-three such centers in Chelyabinsk Region, over forty of which have already applied for the contest. The centers will compete in five categories: school teams, innovational IT, distance learning programs for schoolchildren and their parents, and innovational pedagogy. The application package may include not only the centers’ projects developed over the last three years but also letters of support from students, teachers, and parents.

During the competition’s final tour in Kopeisk, six winners will be selected: one in each of the five categories and one absolute winner; they will be given 50,000 RUR and 250,000 RUR, respectively.

The interschool tutorial centers were set up in the region within the framework of the federal project on IT in education. The centers have received some 520 million RUR from the federal, regional, and municipal budgets over the last three years.

Chelyabinsk Region was one of Russia’s seven regions with no school without an Internet connection, while most of the local teachers have mastered information technologies: over 24,000 teachers underwent retraining in the tutorial centers, which comes to 80% of all the educational workers in the region. 5,000 more teachers will come to the courses before the end of the year.

The tutorial centers also coordinate videoconferences, meetings and round table discussions in several places simultaneously, which allows the teachers from different towns and cities to share their experience and make important decisions faster.