Economic Education of School Students: Causes of the Crisis

Russia’s national school curriculum standards stipulate economic education at three levels: basic, advanced, and as part of the social theory course, yet schools rarely include basic economics in their curricula. Curricula of 615 St. Petersburg schools available at their official websites as well as data from online surveys of parents, students, teachers, and school administrators are used to find evidence of the demand for economics as a subject among school students. The fact that only two levels of economics instruction are represented in St. Petersburg schools is explained by staffing issues and impossibility to take the Unified State Exam (USE) in economics. Initiatives for a meaningful change the current situation are proposed in the article.