Hajnówka school enrolls record number of first-graders in Belarusian classes

July 29, Pozirk. A school in Poland’s Hajnówka has enrolled a record number of first graders (102) for a course involving instruction in Belarusian.

“We have admitted all those who applied. This is over the limit of our expectations,” Polskie Radio quoted Dariusz Musiuk, director of II Liceum, as saying.

The students will study Belarusian and some other subjects in Belarusian as a pilot, he said. Nearly all students come from Hajnówka and the Hajnówka powiat.

Hajnowka, a town with population of about 20,000, is located 30 kilometers off the Belarusian border. The area has a large ethnic Belarusian community.

Meanwhile, in Belarus the number of secondary school students receiving instruction in Belarusian has plunged by 34.4 percent over the past decade to 88,885 and continues to decline, according to Pozirk’s analysis of the National Statistics Committee’s (Biełstat) data.

By contrast, enrolment in schools with instruction in Russian rose nationwide by 22.6 percent to 991,274.

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