How Fares Soviet Education?

Prom Our Russian Correspondent
The first all-Union Conference of Communist teachers opened in Moscow on August 11, in the presence of some 500 teachers.
Comrade Turkin, commissar for education, reporting on the progress of education during the past year, indicated that the primary education in the U.S.S.R. had improved and that the number of qualified teachers had increased.
Nevertheless there ere considerable shortcomings, chief of which is the fact that many children never go to school at all.
One of the reasons for abstention seems to be the shortage of schools. Turkin stated that schoolbuilding has badly legged behind: by August 1 of this year 344 urban schools were scheduled to be opened, but only three were actually opened, whilst in the rural districts of the 700 schools planned only 65 have been built.
SHORTAGE The Commissar also said that the problems of fuel and repair were very acute—apparently the school managers have to shift for themselves and are unable to do so without the assistance of local Soviets and Party organisations. There is also a shortage of text and copy books: by August 1 the school publishing office issued only half of the required 65 million copies.