Penza, 12 October 2015. PenzaNews. Two educational institutions in the Penza region – the gubernatorial boarding lyceum for gifted children and the linguistics gymnasium No. 6 – were included in the list of 500 best schools of Russia that achieved the highest results in education during the 2014-2015 school year, according to results of the research by the Moscow Center of Continuous Education in Mathematics together with the project “Social Navigator” by “Rossiya Segodnya” international news agency and Teacher’s Newspaper.

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The list was based on the results of the year 9 State Final Examination, and school competitions on various subjects.

The top three of the list includes the Presidential physico-mathematical lyceum No. 239 in St. Petersburg, the republican lyceum for gifted children in Saransk, and the school No. 57 in Moscow.

The cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg, as well as Tatarstan and the Chelyabinsk and Moscow regions, took the lead in numbers of schools in top 500 sorted by location.

“The 2015 top 500 schools list shows how the numbers of successful education practices unveiled in regions is increasing over the past two years. We see great examples of successful schools in various fields and practically all regions of Russia,” Ivan Yaschenko,

In his turn, Natalya Tyurina, head of the the project “Social Navigator” under “Rossiya Segodnya,” pointed out that the research is actively developing unbiased rating methods.

“This is the first time we present info on schools without the Unified State Exam results, and this resulted in an improvement of quality for all listed ratings and allows to monitor educational yield at the longest stage – school years 1 to 9 the ‘main school’,” she said.

Meanwhile, Peter Polozhevets, editor-in-chief of Teacher’s Newspaper, pointed out that the list of best schools is a valuable resource for parents, students, the teaching community and those responsible for regional education systems.

“Its peculiar feature is its diachronic development – the one that compares with the previous years. I am glad to see that the independent rating and presentation project for the best Russian schools allows to highlight those which contribute to increase in quality of education and deserve the right to be the examples for the rest,” he stressed.