"Zhoghovurd" daily writes: "Zhoghovurd" daily newspaper continues the "Lies of the Government" series, about those statements that have received public resounding, the numbers or justifications of which need at least additional explanation and factual evidence.
This time, the center of our attention is the statement made by the member of the CP, Taguhi Ghazaryan, from the rostrum of the National Assembly.
The deputy stated that there are schools in Armenia where 20 million drams are spent annually from the state budget per student.
The number is so impressive that "Zhoghovurd" daily newspaper decided to use simple arithmetic to understand what the 20 million drams declared by the deputy really means.
If we divide 20 million drams over 12 months, it will be about 1 million 667 thousand drams per month.
However, the student does not attend school for all 12 months of the year. During the academic year, the course is about 9 months, depending on the class and the calendar. Even if we take about 200 school days per year for the calculation, it turns out: 20,000,000 ÷ 200 = 100,000 AMD.
In other words, according to the logic of the figure presented by Taguhi Ghazaryan, the state spends about 100 thousand drams for each school day per student in the given school.
For comparison, on a monthly basis, it is about 1.67 million drams. Therefore, a natural question arises: what service does the public school provide to one child, the cost of which is estimated to reach 100 thousand drams per day?
"Zhoghovurd" daily newspaper also studied the current procedure of financing state schools. And here there is an important circumstance. According to the decision of the government N 850-N adopted on June 26, 2025, the financing of public educational institutions is calculated not simply by the principle of "one child × a certain amount", but by a rather complex formula. The number of elementary, middle and senior classes, teaching and management staff, a number of other costs, as well as school-wide costs are taken into account.
This means that, especially in schools with very small numbers of students, if you divide the total cost of maintaining the school by the number of students, it is theoretically possible to get a very high number per student. In the previous financing system, separate mechanisms were also planned for small, mountainous, high-altitude schools or the only schools in a given settlement.
But this is where the most important question arises.
If Taguhi Ghazaryan did not mean the 20 million drams directly spent on the education of one student, but the entire maintenance cost of an extremely small number of schools, mechanically divided by the number of one or more students studying there, then that circumstance should have been clearly stated.
Otherwise, the public gets the impression that the state actually spends 20 million drams a year on the education of each such child.
Moreover, it can be seen from the current order that the money allocated to the school can include not only the teaching itself, but also many costs that support the school's activities. Therefore, the wording "we spend 20 million per student" without publishing the name of the school, the number of students, the total budget and the structure of expenses is highly subjective and exaggerated.
Therefore, the "Zhoghovurd" daily has public questions to the KP MP and the Ministry of Education and Culture.
If there is such a school, publish the name and number.
If the 20 million was obtained by dividing the maintenance costs of the entire school among several students, then that is how it should be presented to the public.
It is easy to make numbers from the political pulpit. But every dram of the state budget is the taxpayer's money, and the statement of 20 million drams requires justification corresponding to 20 million drams.
More details in today's issue of the newspaper
