YEREVAN, MAY 12, NOYAN TAPAN. The RA Government approved at the May 11 sitting the draft "On Making Amendments to the RA Law "On Education." Making of the decision is conditioned by the necessity of passing to the 12 years secondary education in the RA. As Norayr Ghukasian, the RA Deputy Minister of Education and Science informed journalists after the sitting, the goal of the draft is to create a legislative basis for passing to the 12 years teaching of the secondary system of Armenia. According to him, main changes relate to Articles 15 and 18 of the RA law "On Education" in the first of which the age for starting attending school will be fixed. According to the draft, those children who will be 6 years old till December 31 of this calendar year will attend first grade. It was mentioned that while passing to the 11 years education that age was fixed 6.5 years old. The next change is classification of levels of the school arising of the 12 years education: elementary school: 1-4 grades, middle school: 5-9 grades. and high school: 10-12 grades. N.Ghukasian mentioned that according to the draft law, passing to the 12 years education will be implemented starting from this year. Two types of first grades, of 6 and 6.5 years old pupils, will be formed according to age groups, they will leave the school correspondingly in 12 and 11 years. The next year, the 6 years old first grades will attend 2nd grade, and 6.5 years old will attend 3rd grade. Arising of that, numeration of all grades will increase by one. It was also mentioned that in 2011 no school-leavers will be in the republic, what is connected with passing from 10 years education to 11 years one in 2001. According to N.Ghukasian, 53 thousand first grade pupils will attend school this year, 16 500 of them are 6 years old, others are 6.5.

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