The Ministry of Education has published an order to change the school curriculum. From September 2025, the social studies course will begin only in ninth grade. Now the subject is studied from the sixth grade — one lesson per week.
Due to social studies, the number of history lessons will increase from the fifth to the eighth grade — from two to three times a week. In ninth grade there will be two per week. Thus, the number of hours of history over five years of basic general education will increase from 340 to 476.
The reform became known in February, when the ministry posted a draft order. The Teacher trade union then collected signatures against the reduction of social studies hours. In their petition, they noted that the social studies exam is the most popular elective subject for the OGE and the Unified State Exam, since the results are required for admission to the faculties of law and economics.
“I will not hide that many employees of ministries and departments propose to eliminate this subject [social studies] as harmful,” answered questions from teachers about future changes to the program, former Minister of Culture Vladimir Medinsky, who now holds the post of assistant president.
“Ideally, in my opinion, it would be good for us to make a single OGE and Unified State Exam in history and social studies <…> Let’s see, we’ll try to preserve [the subject],” he said.
Since 2023, Russian schools have switched to unified history textbooks for grades 10-11, created under the editorship of Medinsky and MGIMO Rector Anatoly Torkunov. They announced the release of textbooks for fifth through ninth grades by September 2024.
The textbooks for high school students included the annexation of Crimea and the war in Ukraine. For example, the manual describes Ukraine as an “ultra-nationalist state” where “any dissent” is persecuted, and the purpose of the Russian invasion of a neighboring country is called “the defense of Donbass and proactively ensuring the security of Russia.” The Chechen authorities criticized the benefits because of the paragraph about Stalin's deportations.