Secondary general-education school

Secondary general-education school [середня загально-освітня школа; serednia zahalno-osvitnia shkola]. A type of school established in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics by the 1958 school reform. Its full name was ‘secondary general-education labor polytechnical school with production teaching’. The school was to offer an 11-year program of study giving pupils a complete secondary general education, as well as some vocational training in a branch of the economy. The same reform made the study of the Ukrainian language optional in the Russian-language school system in Ukraine. The vocationalization of secondary education was opposed by many education officials, and under Nikita Khrushchev the 11-year program was never fully implemented. The 1965 school act downplayed the vocational and polytechnical component in secondary education and restored a 10-year program (see Ten-year schools) (except in some non-Russian-language schools, where an 11-year program was permitted). Completion of the program gave the pupil the right to apply for entry to postsecondary institutions. From 1986, 10-year secondary general-education schools were gradually transformed into schools with an 11-year program. In 1988–9 there were 9,543 secondary general-education schools in Ukraine, with 5.6 million pupils.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]