Diversity as an Opportunity

When an Ethnic Majority Feels Pushed Aside

St. Petersburg is a city that has always been proud of its cultural heritage, a city where people with different nationalities and religions have lived together in peace. But in recent years, this city has seen a series of attacks on migrants and foreign students.

In 2006, the city’s governor Valentina Matvienko responded with a comprehensive tolerance programme. In addition to information campaigns and events, a specific project entitled “Diversity as an Opportunity” was launched by the Education Committee of St. Petersburg in the summer of 2009. KulturKontakt Austria and the Finnish National Board of Education are acting as cooperation partners.

8% of all schoolgoers in St. Petersburg are migrants. Only in a few schools does the proportion of pupils with migrant backgrounds exceed 10%. “Many migrants are here illegally, but their children have the right to attend school. Since these children often enter school in the middle of the year, it is impossible to find out ahead of time what language skills they have”, explains Ursula Mauric, “k-education” educational coordinator in St. Petersburg: Increasingly often, Russian teachers, children and parents – in other words, the ethnic majority – feel linguistically insecure at school. Until the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the education level of immigrants to St. Petersburg was considerably higher – often, it was university graduates who remained in the city.
The Russian language was part of the Soviet school curriculum. In the last twenty years, many migrant labourers, often from educationally disadvantaged environments, have moved to St. Petersburg to work in the rapidly expanding construction industry, Mauric relates.

Seven pilot schools in St. Petersburg are currently working on school development projects in the context of “Diversity as an Opportunity” and are beginning to engage in mutual exchange with respect to their experiences. Until recently, the not inconsiderable competition between schools had resulted in an avoidance of discussing problems and an emphasis on the advantages of the respective school cultures.
In the light of growing migration, however, the schools are finding themselves confronted with a lack of licensed teachers who speak the native languages of their pupils, as well as with inefficient state support structures. What is needed above all is assistance with development processes. The goal of the project is to point out the opportunities that a diversity of cultures and languages can bring for learning in the school context.

The multilateral and inter-institutional cooperation is new. Austrian experts from the University of Education in Vienna are making a central contribution with the concept of intercultural learning as a general principle of teaching. Werner Wintersteiner, Director of the Centre for Peace Research and Peace Education at the University of Klagenfurt, is helping with strategic and social policy aspects. “We are supporting the development of an innovative programme for teachers for the future,” Mauric emphasises. Finland is focussing on the transfer of knowledge in the areas of leadership and school management. Final results of the project are expected to be recommendations, methods and guidelines, as well as information about further training for teachers, for the education authorities in St. Petersburg. Mauric’s hopeful outlook is: “It would be ideal if we could develop a structure capable of offering concrete assistance with central issues in the context of school and migration. If we could have experts supporting the schools with development processes on a regular basis, considerable changes could be effected.” /KKA Editorial Staff

At present, 12 cultural autonomies are registered in St. Petersburg: 84.7% of the population is Russian, 13.4% is Ukrainian, and 1.9% is comprised of minorities from Armenia, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan et al. Recently there has been a growing influx of migrants from the Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova and Kazakhstan.