Grandfathers and grandsons in a mountain village, Dagestan. CC-BY-NC-2.0: Dagestan Mountains and People Partnership / Flickr. Some rights reserved.Russia’s North Caucasus region faces many of the same challenges in education as the rest of the country — a lack of nursery places, school classes bursting at the seams, low-quality university education.
There are, however, also specifically local issues at play: preschools are overseen by the Russia’s Center for Combatting Extremism, special schools are set up for children of both militants and security officials, and university graduates go on to continue their studies in Saudi Arabia.
“Extremism” at the nursery
On 10 January, four cars drove up to the Happy Child private children’s centre in Makhachkala, Dagestan. The occupants, men wearing civilian clothes, climbed over the gate and entered the building. There were 23 children and six members of staff inside. When the nursery’s founder, alerted by a call from one of the teachers, arrived, they were all gone.
