• Vesti Segodnya prints an interview with researcher of the Centre for Public Policy “Providus” Marija Golubeva about a study “Divided Education, Divided Citizens?”
• 219 policemen have insufficient state language proficiency

Vesti Segodnya prints an interview with researcher of the Public Policy Centre “Providus” Marija Golubeva about a study “Divided Education, Divided Citizens?” conducted in Latvia, Estonia, Slovakia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kazakhstan, and Tadzhikistan. The study explores how ethnically/linguistically divided education influences civil enculturation of students and teachers in schools. According to Marija Golubeva, division of Latvian schools on schools with Latvian language and Russian language of instructions promote establishment of stereotypes among ethnic Latvian and ethnic minority students towards each other. At the same time, transition of all schools only in to Latvian language would not be the right decision because the demand for education in minority language is very high as ethnic minorities want to preserve their cultural and ethnic identity. Mr. Golubeva believes that one of the possible resolutions of the problem of ethnic segregation could be to hold of some kind of projects where Russian and Latvian speaking students would communicate with each other. Other part of resolution could be to revise education content, in particularly, history in schools should be taught in such a way that it would not arose conflict in the society but promote dialogue.

Inspection of state language proficiency among Latvian policemen revealed that 219 policemen (or 3% of all policemen) have insufficient language proficiency as required by the State Language Law. According to a representative of the State Police, these policemen should improve their Latvian language proficiency by 1 October. Latvijas Avize, Diena