KAZAN — Google has become a classroom tool in Tatarstan as the republic, already ranked by Forbes as Russia’s best region for business, invests heavily in digital technologies for its schools in hopes of becoming the best region for education as well.
Tatarstan's annual budget for education has doubled over the past five years to 36 billion rubles ($1.2 billion), and it is spending 1.92 billion rubles over 2010-11 to develop computer-based education, the republic's education and science minister, Albert Gilmutdinov, said at the Electronic School 2011 conference in Kazan. In addition, 103.2 million rubles in federal funding is being used.
Gilmutdinov recalled the Russian saying "a miser pays twice" as he explained the republic's hefty investment in education. To be commercially successful in the 21st century, Tatarstan will have to be well-educated, he told The Moscow Times at the conference last week.