Russia is considering a new bill that would introduce education fees for the children of migrants, sparking debate across the country, Paralel.Az reports citing Realnoe Vremya.

If the document is adopted, the new rules will come into force next year.

A bill on fee-based education for foreigners has been sent to the Russian government for approval. It is proposed to establish the right of this category of citizens to receive Russian education on a commercial basis — at the expense of individuals and legal entities in accordance with agreements on the provision of paid educational services. The initiative was prepared by the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) faction.

This concerns pre-school, primary general, basic general and secondary general education as well as vocational training. Currently, according to current legislation, migrants have equal rights with Russian citizens — their children study in our country on a generally accessible and free basis. However, the uncontrolled increase in the number of these students and pre-schoolers, according to the authors of the project, has led to a shortage of places in kindergartens and schools in the country — currently there is a shortage of about 900,000 places.

“Foreign workers bring their families to Russia, enrol their children to educational institutions for free. This, in turn, significantly reduces the level of educational work and the assimilation of curricula by Russian schoolchildren. In most cases, migrant children have a poor command of Russian or do not know it at all. This is aggravated by the fact that sometimes there are more foreign students in classes than Russian students. We propose ending this ‘charity epic,’ when foreign children are educated at the expense of the Russian budget, at the expense of our taxpayers,” one of the authors of the bill, head of the Duma Committee on Social Policy Yaroslav Nilov commented on the initiative.

In addition, it is proposed to create adaptation classes, which will be a mandatory part of the educational process for migrant children. Since the appearance of such classes will increase the workload of the teachers, this will require an increase in their salary, the authors of the document explain.