Experience of Private Schools for Development of Advanced Learning Practices

Abstract

An analysis of social orders that determined strategic development of gymnasium “Alma Mater” in Saint Petersburg throughout twenty years has allowed us to point out the most important changes that the gymnasium has gone through. The first social order the school responded to was teaching different children. In the 1990s, parents often sent their kids to private schools not in the search of elite education but because they didn’t have a possibility to send them in a public school. Children with learning and behavior problems made the best part of private school students. To respond to the demand for teaching different children, the gymnasium introduced subject-specific learning from the very first year at primary school in 1991. Another tangible change, introducing individual studies in 1994, was prompted by the impossibility for students to make same-level achievements at the same rate in compliance with the learning program. The gymnasium has been offering part-time and distance learning since 2003. For this purpose, the  school structure has been provided with an externship department, with more teachers, and with ICT-based workplaces. We regard introducing subject-specific learning in  primary school and individual studies at all stages of general education in the gymn asium as an embodiment of the idea of “adaptive school” engrained today in federal state educational standards. We believe that problems in private school education that arise due to changes in social orders, parental expectations and the student body forecast  similar problems in the public school to appear in the nearest future. Bearing in mind consistent transformations in Russian education, it makes sense to consider the existing  experience of private schools when designing and implementing public school development programs.