The expertise in analyzing the regional education systems of the Russian empire (based on the articles of the international network center for fundamental and applied research). Part 2 [Опыт анализа региональных систем образования Российской империи (на материале статей Международного сетевого центра фундаментальных и прикладных исследований). Часть 2]

The history of education in the Russian Empire remains a controversial and politicized topic. If in Soviet times the achievements of the imperial system were ignored, now, on the contrary, there is a certain idealization of it. This article attempts to look at the education system of the Russian Empire as a set of regional education systems, between which there were serious differences. To achieve this goal, statistical data on 5 provinces and 2 Cossack regions were analyzed. It is concluded that by the beginning of the XX century the differences between the regional education systems of the Russian Empire have significantly leveled off. Thus, in all the regions under consideration, two school systems were functioning in parallel - the schools of the Ministry of Public Education and the schools of the spiritual department. In addition, in 3 regions out of 7 examined, approximately the same proportion of school-age children (about 40 %) studied. However, the differences between regional education systems remained, moreover, two ways of their further development were outlined: either continuing to increase the number of schools and students in order to achieve universal primary education, or improving the quality of education by closing the worst schools. © 2021 International Network Center for Fundamental and Applied Research. All rights reserved.