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eet “ala which comprises the first four grades; the “inc lete middie school," eomprising the first seven grades: ana the “middle school,” comprising the full ten-year program that prepares students for entrunce into the university. The teaching program is identical at corresponding levels in all three types of schools. The student who has completed a seven-year school or the seventh grade of a ten-year school can enter 2a “technicum,” or trade high school, which allows him to complete his ten-year school program with three years of semi-professional technica! train- ing in one of a great variety of felds. ain example of the distribution of these schools might be given by citing the town of Penza, which as was noted earlier has 2 population of perhaps 175,000. When we asked the alert young principal of one of its middie schools how many schools there were in the town, her answer was simple: “Enough for everybody.” Apparently the Sovict State Secreis Jaw of 1947 still makes Soviet citizens reluctant to give any kind of statis- tics to foreigners. Fortunately, there is Jesa reluctance in the Large Sovict Encyclopedia, which declares that on January 1, 1955, the town of Penza had 12 primary schools, 15 seven-year schools, 22 ten-year schools and 7 trade high schools. In addi- tion it had 11 “schools for working youth,” which operate nor- mally in three daily shifts and provide the basie ten-year edu- cation for young pecple who for one reason or another have dropped out of regular schools and wish to continue studying while they work. These schools for working youth were set up near the end of World War II as an emergency measure for young people whose schooling had been interrupted, but now they appear to have become a permanent part of the Soviet educational system. Longer Schooling Given In the United States about 55 per cent of the children who high school. In the Soviet Union the proportion of those who complete the ten-year-school program was only about 5 per cent in the past and even today is only about 12 per cent. This has resulted partly from lack of school facilities and partly from a highly selective educational policy, designed to weed out all but the most able students and direct the others into types of education cr occupations more suited to their ability, Until recently the ten-year middle school served primarily to. prepare the abler students for the University. A substantia] revision of the ten-year curriculum, which went into effect in the fall of 59