End of education is where rows about bills begin

Thousands of students across Russia will celebrate the end of their school education today – while their parents worry about the rising costs of their offspring’s increasingly lavish parties.

Now parents are demanding an account of the expenses, which can be as high as $800 per pupil, to have better control over where all the money goes.

The graduation ball is a rite of passage for all Russian teenagers, the climax of eleven years of education and a chance for one last party before adulthood beckons.

On June 23 some 1,400 schools in Moscow are hosting graduation balls for 61,000 students.

But it doesn’t come cheap. Costs per student range from 80 to 800 dollars.

“The past years have seen many parents paying through the nose to make the leaving parties as lavish as possible. But the thing is that after the parties are over, no-one is able to get an account of the expenses,” says Alexander Gavrilov from Moscow’s Department of Education.

“We advised the parents’ committee to report to the parents on the expenses so that the latter have no questions whatsoever,” he adds.

Valerya Radvina, a school supervisor agrees: “Maybe sometimes it wasn’t transparent enough for the parents and the children. People have the right to know what their money actually buys. There’s a lot of spending in the graduation year as it is, because children are entering colleges and universities.”

Most schools are taking the new guidelines seriously.

“Each class had a meeting. We wrote all the financial information on the blackboard, what the money was spent on – balloons, souvenirs, even the most minor items. We had it all calculated, all receipts and details were available. All the accounting’s very simple and open,” explains Elena Kurochkina, member of a parent’s committee at a Moscow school.

The students and teachers are making final preparations before the graduation day celebrations. They’re hoping the festivities run smoothly and that all the students have a good time.

And they’ll be hoping that when the final curtain falls parents’ will be shouting encore, rather than asking for their money back.