St Petersburg educational authorities have announced an ambitious development program to fix the city's education system, but no one knows where the estimated $32 billion or more needed to carry out the plan can be found.
The "St Petersburg Schools to the Year 2000" plan was unveiled last week by the educational committee of the Mayor's Office.
Education committee chief Oleg Lebedev said about 153.5 trillion roubles ($32 billion) would be needed in the coming five years for modern equipment, construction and repair of buildings, according to January estimates.
The education sector needed 8.4 billion roubles ($1.8 million) for the same purpose last year, but only 1.4 billion roubles ($290,000) was allocated by the city budget, he said.
He said 84 billion roubles ($17.5 million) would be needed this year.
The city also needs to upgrade the quality of its teachers, Mr Lebedev said.
One of the cornerstones of the committee's project is the need to provide a greater number of teachers qualified enough to meet the current demands of a labor market where foreign languages, or knowledge of physics and mathematics are in great demand.
Mr Lebedev said a new type of teacher, "with a wide spectrum of humanitarian education," was needed.
He said only 18,000 teachers of the about 60,000 currently serving the city's 1 million schoolchildren have the qualifications necessary to meet pupils' needs.
The committee's program covers about 1,000 institutions --kindergartens, children's homes, primary and secondary schools and technical colleges.
While teaching is no longer prestigious among young people, Mr Lebedev said the program was designed to attract them to the profession.
Teachers earn an average of 494,300 roubles ($100) a month, despite a government decree to match teachers' wages with those of factory workers, who earn an average of 659,300 roubles ($145).