Penza, 23 October 2014. PenzaNews. The officials will reduce the number of reporting documents that educational institutions are required to provide to various departments on a regular basis, said Nikolai Kotov, chairman of the Federation of Trade Unions of the Penza region, co-chairman of the regional branch of All-Russia People's Front (APF), during an October 23 press conference on the results of the two-day APF forum “Quality education for the Country.”

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According to him, the number of documents requested from schools, colleges and universities by various departments, offices and ministries has increased several times over the past few years.

“Today this is a significant problem of the education system. During the forum, the teachers and professors gave absolutely stunning figures. There were examples of local areas where they provide from 900 to 2,000 papers to the ministry during a 9-month school year. Even if we take 900 documents a year, it transforms into 30 documents a day, not counting the weekends. The school principals, vice principals and ordinary teachers are doing absolutely unthinkable and stupendous work. By having to complete these documents, they are diverted from their immediate tasks — educating and training our children,” Nikolai Kotov said.

He added that the President of Russia Vladimir Putin, who took part in the plenary session of the Education Forum, mentioned the issue among the most dangerous.

“Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin] heard us out and promised he would give corresponding instructions. We’ll deal with this issue,” the Penza APF branch co-chairman concluded.