How Russia's school network shrank as state influence over lessons grew

The drop was greatest in rural areas: state schools fell from more than 45,000 to around 21,000. Euronews identifies per-pupil funding as one factor. When funding follows enrollment, small schools have fewer resources; a consolidation program began in 2001. The count of urban schools also fell, from 22,700 to 16,300.

As schools closed, the average number of pupils served by each school rose from around 300 about 15 years ago to around 470 in 2026, Euronews reports. That does not prove every closure could have been avoided, but it suggests demographic change alone does not explain the contraction. Funding formulas and administrative choices also help determine whether a community retains its school.

Parents and teachers opposed to mergers warned that larger schools could be harder to manage and overcrowded classes could harm educational quality. Those are concerns, not established outcomes. Euronews describes Atary as one example: after the village school was deemed unprofitable, young people left and the village became largely abandoned. That account illustrates the possible consequences for a community, not a universal result of school closures.

What is the state putting into lessons?

A separate set of evidence concerns classroom content. Euronews reports that a weekly series called Conversations about What Matters began in September 2022, with ministry-provided materials about contemporary Russian life. The official program portal identifies the class as a Monday session and says educator materials are recommended; it does not establish that student attendance is legally compulsory. Its archived schedule includes topics such as Victory Day, Crimea and Russia, and Russia’s place in the world.

Russia introduced unified history textbooks for senior pupils in 2023 and extended them to middle-school grades in the 2024–25 school year, Euronews reports. Amnesty International characterized the 2023 textbook as an attempt to indoctrinate students and said it justified Russia’s actions in Ukraine. That is Amnesty’s assessment, not a neutral description of the book or evidence of how students respond to it.

Anna Wright, Amnesty International’s researcher for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, said the books “hide the truth and distort the facts about serious human rights violations and crimes under international law committed by Russian troops against Ukrainians,” according to Euronews. The reporting does not establish how consistently teachers use the materials or how the lessons affect students’ learning and beliefs.

Who decides what education is worth?

The two developments reveal different forms of power. Funding rules can make a small rural school appear costly when judged by enrollment alone. Centrally supplied lesson plans and unified textbooks, meanwhile, give the state influence over how national history is presented. Neither trend establishes that one caused the other, but both affect what education is available and what account of events students encounter.

Communist Party lawmaker Dmitry Novikov has proposed treating rural schools as social infrastructure, pausing closures of village upper-secondary classes and providing year-round transport when schools close, Euronews reports. The reporting does not establish that those proposals became policy.

The open questions are whether decision-makers will protect access to local schooling and how much room teachers and students have to encounter accounts of history beyond state-provided materials.