YEREVAN, JULY 29, NOYAN TAPAN - ARMENIANS TODAY. Yerevan School N20 after John Kirakosian responded the proposal of establishing friendly ties with Tbilisi N131 Russian-Armenian Secondary School presented by the RA Ministry of Diaspora. Manana Karapetian, the teacher of the History of Armenian Church of Tbilisi N131 Russian-Armenian Secondary School and the editor-in-chief of the Zrutsakits (interlocuter) school newspaper informed the Noyan Tapan correspondent about it. In her words, the administration of the mentioned school of Tbilisi addressed to the RA Ministry of Diaspora to get assistance in the issue of establishing ties with one of schools of Armenia. It is envisaged that non-Armenian pupils of Tbilisi School N131 will aslo participate for 10 days in classes of Yerevan School N20, and the later's pupils will visit the mentioned school in Tbilisi. Joint cultural programs are also envisaged. Touching upon the problems of the Armenian schools in Georgia, M. Karapetian considered appropriate that exact sciences and natural sciences are taught in those schools not translated from Georgian into Armenian, but by Armenian language text-books used in Armenia as there are mistakes and faults in the Georgian text-books on the mentioned subjects which are also repeated in their Armenian translations. She affirmed that there is need of text-books on the Armenian Fiction, on the History of Armenian People and Art and, especially, on the Oratory. The circumstance that Georgian Armenian pupils compose their ideas at the all-Armenian olympiads on the Armenian language and literature worse than, for example, Iranian and Syrian Armenian pupils, is conditioned by absence of the text-books on the Oratory. The Georgian Armenian teacher also stated that the mentioned school in Tbilisi is in the region of the city populated by Armenians, and 350 from 460 pupils of the school are Armenians, but only 64 pupils studied at Armenian classes during the 2008/2009 school year. He conditioned such a situation with the circumstance that Armenian parents prefer to give their child to a Russian or Georgian school, considering that it is not advantageous for a child to leave an Armenian school from the point of view of entering an institution of higher education in Georgia and possibilities of finding a job. That is the reason that Armenian classes of the mentioned school occupy 45-person classrooms for a class of 4-5 pupils, and the Russian classes are overloaded what influences on the education quality. For this reason a small flow of pupils from Russian classes to Armenian ones has already been noticed during the recent years. Manana Karapetian mentioned that teaching of the Georgian language is also on a high level at the Armenian department of the school, owing to what 4 from 5 school leavers of 2008 of the Armenian department entered Georgian institutions of higher education. She also added that if there were 34 Armenian schools in Tbilisi in the middle of 1970s, there are only 6 ones at present.

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