The article recognizes that the knowledge society and the economics of knowledge have considerably changed the demands placed on education. The teaching of concrete subjects is now combined with a general emphasis on general intellectual development and the stimulation of creativity and independence. Knowledge quickly becomes outdated, and the school must make its pupils aware of the need to constantly be one’s own teacher. This is happening in societies in which the movement towards a knowledge society was gradual, but even then the education paradigm does not change smoothly, but is prone to deep and rapid reforms. In Russia, this change took place in the post-crisis period. Russian schools suffered major losses in staff, and successful reforms are impossible without compensating for these losses. The article considers possible ways of recovering staff potential in the middle term perspective, if the necessary resources can be found. The issues considered here are not abstract; they arose in the course of successful experiments carried out by HSE staff in several regions.