There are 34 million schoolchildren and students in Russia

Today, on the first day of a new school year, 34 million people were accepted into Russia's educational establishments. 18 million of them went to schools, 6.5 million started their classes at institutes and the rest at other establishments. Vice-Premier Galina Karelova quoted these figures at her meeting with President Vladimir Putin in Kremlin.

The President drew the Vice-Premier's attention to schools in rural regions and remote areas of the country. Putin asked to help more those small schools. Russia has 5,600 schools where the number of pupils does not exceed 25.

The Russian President also spoke about his today's trip to a college in the town of Krasnogorsk, Moscow region, where specialists are trained on the request of a local enterprise. Putin emphasised this way makes it possible for graduates to count on getting high-paying jobs. The President instructed officials to generalize and use the experience of specialists' training on the request of enterprises.

Another important issue, according to Putin, is providing young people with housing. The Vice-Premier told the head of state that the project "Housing For Young People", recently launched in Moscow, is to be expanded throughout the country. According to Galina Karelova, 500 million roubles are allocated in the federal budget for that purpose; Russian Federation constituent members are set to allocate another 6 billion roubles, while employers are to earmark 2 billion. The issue of housing construction for the young is supposed to be discussed this week at a House of Government meeting with Russian regions' representatives.