YEREVAN, DECEMBER 21, NOYAN TAPAN. The greatest omission and fault of RA Ministry of Education and Science is lack of spreading of information and agitation. RA Minister of Education and Science Levon Mkrtchian said this at the December 20 final press conference of 2006. "We should be able to present to public our work and processes going on in the sphere of education," the Minister said. He assured that for filling up this gap the Ministry probably will have a one-hour TV news broadcast starting next year. The Minister said that the reforms in the sphere of general education also almost completed. In his words, the preschool education is in incomplete state. The Minister said that preschool education conception is already ready and has been submitted to the government. The conception also includes some components of the Poverty Reduction Strategic Program, according to which, preschool education program will be experimented with allocated 100 thousand dollars in 2007-2008 in two Armenian regions. The Minister touched upon the teachers' retraining program implemented with the funds of WB credit program, within the framework of which 17 thousand teachers have retrained up to present. In total, 38 thousand Armenian teachers should pass retraining. Besides, 300 teachers took part in interactive teaching courses. L.Mkrtchian also spoke about program of schools' computerization that will end in 2008. For the present, in 2005, 267 out of 1468 Armenian schools received computers, in 2006 368 and in 2007 computer classrooms will be opened in another 311 schools. In the Minister's words, they have made a decision to restore school libraries and to place these computer classrooms in libraries. The Minister also said that for the present, one computer falls to 40 pupils.

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