School and vocational education in a typical Russian city

The article presents the data characterizing the situation in school education and vocational training in a typical Russian city. It exposes growth in the share of payable services at school: payment for additional education services is more and more often added to traditional expenses on school needs in the same school. Since almost half households with school children identify themselves as having income below the average, this trend reinforces the inequality in the sphere of education. It shows that students of technical schools and colleges assess the quality of education as acceptable in general, but the school enrolment is estimated by them as not high, that is indicative of a small demand for this level of education on the part of motivated and capable young people. The latter is due to the difficult situation in the real economy branches that does not allow industrial enterprises to offer a competitive work remuneration to vocational school graduates.