Preliminary Results of the New Admission Process for First Graders: Schools Are Being Unloaded

One of the key components of the admission process for first graders in public schools of Armenia is the preliminary verification of children's data. Parents must check the accuracy of the data by May 31 by logging into the stugum.emis.am website.

During a press conference at the Armenian Press office, Artak Poghosyan, the director of the National Center for Educational Technologies, noted that the next phase after verifying the data will be registering the children. The hayt.emis.am system will open on June 1 for the main application process. Children whose parents work at the school or have a brother or sister already studying at that school can be registered until June 10. From June 11, the system will be open for all applicants.

Poghosyan emphasized that if the child's and parent's data are not verified in advance, there may be issues on the actual registration day. For example, it might turn out that the child's or parent's documents are not digitized. In such cases, the system cannot find the parent-child connection and will not allow registration. The data verification requirement has been established to prevent abuses.

He assured that both data verification and application websites have been operating smoothly without any problems. He noted that last year there were schools where spots were filled within 40 seconds. Despite such a massive influx, the registration website worked without obstacles.

Why did the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports resort to such a solution? According to Poghosyan, the aim was to address a long-studied issue. First, this system eliminates situations where a parent might be denied for personal relationship reasons. Previously, parents would go to schools only to be told that there were no spots available for their child. The question remains whether there really were no spots or if that was said to accommodate children of acquaintances. Now with this system, parents can clearly see where spots are available and where they are not. Additionally, there have been cases where schools admitted more children than allowed by their licenses. This system prevents any initial violations of the licensing standards.

Poghosyan noted that this new admission process for first graders is already yielding results. Analysis shows that there is a certain unloading of overburdened schools in Yerevan and other urban areas.