Higher Elementary Schools

educational institutions in prerevolutionary Russia that arose in accordance with the Statute of June 25, 1912, and replaced urban schools having three and four levels. Higher elementary schools consisted of four levels, each with a year-long course. Most of these schools were segregated by sex, but a small number were coeducational. Children of the middle strata of the urban population who were ten to 13 years old and had completed primary school could attend these schools. The curriculum of higher elementary schools included religion, Russian language and literature, arithmetic and elementary algebra, geometry, geography, the history of Russia and background information from world history, natural science and physics, drawing and sketching, and physical education. (In addition to these subjects, girls’ schools also taught needlework.) Pupils at the higher elementary schools who completed the first and second levels had the right to enter the second or third levels, correspondingly, of secondary general education schools. (Entry into the third level required passing examinations in modern foreign and ancient languages, and this requirement was frequently an obstacle to the continuation of education in secondary school.)

Sometimes there were additional classes or courses in the higher elementary schools, such as pedagogy, agriculture, various trades, bookkeeping, and mail and telegraph operations; these additional classes had a one-year or two-year period of instruction. Higher elementary schools existed until the Great October Revolution.