A school planned to open in Dilijian and promising to make Armenia a respected center of regional and international study may not ever see a stone laid, due to public reaction over Armenia’s controversial “law on language”, allowing for curriculum to be taught in a foreign language.

The Dilijan International School, the brainchild of Moscow tycoon philanthropist Ruben Vardanyan, broke ground in April with President Serzh Sargsyan planting a “tree of knowledge” to herald the project. Expected to open in 2013, the project now is indefinite, owing to “an atmosphere that rejects” the idea.

Armenian lawmakers on Thursday voted overwhelmingly to adopt a controversial package of amendments to the country’s legislation that allows a limited number of schools to teach curricula in a language other than Armenian.

With a vote of 71 to 13, with one abstention the government-drafted amendments to the laws ‘On the Language’ and ‘On General Education’ have cleared the first reading at a special parliament meeting and will go for a second-reading discussion and voting when the National Assembly convenes for a plenary session in fall.

Amid renewed criticism from the opposition and public circles Armenian lawmakers on Wednesday gathered again to discuss a government-drafted package of amendments to the laws ‘On the Language’ and ‘On General Education’ proposing opening a limited number of schools where the main language of instruction will be other than Armenian.

Educators in Armenia have faced questions amid a mounting debate about the quality and fairness of graduation/entrance tests that some say are deliberately complicated to produce more failing results this year.

The speculation is that since Armenia switched from the old-fashioned 10-grade general education to a reformed 12-grade system under the Bologna process, next year will create a gap and will not produce any graduates for state-run and private schools of higher learning that have been mushrooming in the country lately. The failures of this year, therefore, will become entrants next year, the speculation has it.

A minor skirmish broke out between police and university applicants and parents Tuesday at Yerevan State Engineering University on the first day of entrance exams in mathematics. No one was detained and no injuries were reported.

According to witnesses, monitors of the exam collected tests 15 minutes earlier than the announced cutoff period, angering students and parents who – as is custom – waited anxiously outside the hall.

Students in this year’s annual academic ritual of higher education entrance exams are complaining that the questions being asked on tests are not relevant to the material in their text books. The complaints raised enough noise while the authors of the textbooks and publishers have their opinion.

For example, Sokrat Mkrtchyan, Director of ‘Tatev’ Center for Scientific and Educational Support, which publishes textbooks, believes that the problem in fact is not with the content of the textbooks, rather it is that the tests themselves seek to measure knowledge that a student could only get through outside tutoring.

School graduation and higher school entrance exams in Armenia, always a period of tension and stress for pupils and their parents, have been marred by an incident late last week in which a teenage girl committed suicide soon after learning she’d scored an unsatisfactory mark for Armenian language and literature. There was no case in Armenia in recent memory when a student committed suicide over an unsatisfactory mark in an exam.

Outcry over a pending initiative by the Government of Armenia to reopen foreign language schools in Armenia has caused authorities to abandon the idea and agree to allow only foreign language curriculum in private schools, and only then at no more than one percent (about 14 schools) of all schools.

Opponents of the draft law are still not satisfied, however, saying that the move does not “alleviate the danger” they perceive to the education system should foreign language programs be accredited.

A civil campaign is gathering momentum in blogs and internet forums to stop the government from allowing the removal of the legal ban on state-funded foreign language schools in Armenia. Critics say the move will diminish the status of the country’s state language, Armenian, and endanger one of the biggest achievements of independence – language sovereignty.

This year a number of changes are expected in the procedure of joint entrance exams in Armenia, which, according to experts will broaden the choice and chances of students.

Applicants will get an opportunity to apply to different branches of the same higher educational institution in other towns of Armenia, while before, applicants could compete only for six self-funding and two state funding places only at a higher education institution in one and the same town.