Education options for young people from indigenous minorities of the North: regional aspect

Sociological diagnosis of the educational system, which is the most important element of human capital and potential, conducted by us in the Arctic circumpolar region on the basis of Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug (YNAO), situated in the Tyumen Oblast of the Russian Federation, demanded special attention for two of its subsystems: vocational secondary, higher education for the development of the largest hydrocarbon (oil and gas) resources and ethno-regional preschool, primary, secondary general education for children of northern indigenous peoples. In this paper, we rely on the 8-level classification of the Russian educational system in the format of the UNESCO international standard classification of education (ISCED) [1]. Levels 0–7 of ISCED 2013 are analyzed in detail.

The primary goals of this research are as follows: to substantiate the areas of ethno-regional educational system’s improvement, to assess satisfaction of aboriginal ethnic groups’ members with the system of general, professional education, and to assess the system’s compliance with people’s desired future for their children.

The relevance of this problem is caused by the necessity, on the one hand, to provide qualified personnel for this Arctic region’s investment mega-projects and, on the other hand, to create environment for preserving traditional culture, language, life values of minor indigenous peoples of the North (SIPN). At the same time, it is necessary to extend the range of educational trajectories of young people who belong to indigenous people of the North.

Until 2014, oil and gas companies, participating in the Arctic projects, actively involved foreign specialists, who were ready to work in the exotic (for them) environment of the Far North, with the help of high salaries and additional social packages with low tax deductions. However, after the adoption of international restrictions, many of them were made to leave Russia. A task of training domestic specialists became relevant. At the same time, importance of getting qualitative primary, basic, secondary general, vocational secondary and higher education by native northerners, while keeping the culture and language of their peoples, increased. We analyzed different foreign and Russian educational practices in the Arctic regions, conducted field sociological studies in YNAO, which allowed creating the bank of empirical information, necessary for finding a solution to this problem, conducting its sociological diagnostics, and suggesting some recommendations for power structures of YNAO and other stakeholders, which may be of interest to other Arctic regions.

It is worth mentioning that all the levels of education are open for SIPN representatives. However, its implementation on the scale necessary for the region faces several objective and subjective barriers. Objective ones are the attachment of SIPN to their traditional way of living; weak orientation of these peoples’ representatives toward mastering industrial professions, entrepreneurship, etc.; Arctic companies, engaged in the extraction of raw materials, are poorly involved in professional orientation (industrial aspect) of SIPN. The main subjective barrier is that older generations of SIPN want to keep their identity. That is why they do not always want their children to be involved in new spheres of labor (“large world of professions”): they often do not come back to their families, to “minor world” of their people.