The Statistical Committee of Armenia has presented data from different school years regarding the number of teachers in public institutions. According to data presented by the Statistical Committee to Asparez, there were more Russian language and literature teachers than Armenian language and literature teachers in 2018-2019. The number of Russian language teachers was 2,784, whereas the number of Armenian language teachers was 2,765.

Aravot Daily attempted to hear different perspectives on the issue.

Read also Are there fewer Armenian language teachers than Russian language teachers?

The Chair of the Faculty of Armenian Language at Yerevan State University, Ph.D. Yuri Avetisyan told Aravot Daily that he is not aware of the details of this issue, but he considered the numbers to be odd. “I cannot say for sure. There are many different reasons why this could be, for example, the fact that Russian teachers do not have the same burden as Armenian teachers do,” Avetisyan said.

Doctor of Philology and YSU professor Ruben Sakapetyan said that he does not believe this data because it is impossible for the number of Armenian language experts to be less than the number of Russian language experts. “These statistics are not convincing,” the professor said.

The Chair of the Language Committee of the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture, and Sport, Davit Gyurjinyan, also was confused by this data. He emphasized that he would need to study the data and then express his opinion. In any case, he said that it may be due to the fact that Armenian language teachers work full-time and the data might not include the number of elementary school teachers. He said that there could be a number of reasons.

The spokesperson to the Minister of Education, Science, Culture, and Sport, Anzhela Kzhdryan, said, “The logic behind this data is that Armenian language and literature teachers and elementary school teachers are separate. Meanwhile, all elementary school teachers also teach the Armenian language and literature. Therefore, when we add those two numbers together, we have a more accurate picture of the number of Armenian language and literature experts.”

Gohar Hakobyan