Schools for Adults

general-education institutions at which workers may receive instruction without leaving their jobs.

The first schools for adults—mainly primary schools—were created by private initiative in Russia in the late 1850’s (seeEVENING SCHOOLS and SUNDAY SCHOOLS). After the October Revolution of 1917, a state system of adult education was established, and in 1918 one- and two-year training centers and schools for the elimination of illiteracy were opened. After publication of the decree of the Council of People’s Commissars On Eliminating Illiteracy in the RSFSR (1919), such schools and centers were set up throughout the country. Designed primarily for working people between the ages of 16 and 50, they existed until the late 1930’s.

In the 1920’s and 1930’s instruction for persons who had mastered the rudiments of reading and writing was given in schools for the semiliterate and in advanced schools for adults; the former offered a primary education, and the latter a seven-year education. Workers’ universities, peasants’ universities, and one-and two-year general-education schools for adults also helped to raise the general cultural level of workers and peasants and provided advanced production training.

In 1936 two types of schools for adults were created: incomplete secondary general-education schools, formed from elementary schools, and secondary general-education schools, formed from seven-year schools. In 1937, the first incomplete secondary and secondary general-education correspondence schools were opened. In 1943 the schools for young workers and schools for rural youth became schools for adults, which in 1958 were renamed evening (shift) secondary general-education schools (seeEVENING EDUCATION). Foremen’s schools (classes) were first established in the USSR in 1962.