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Alexander Volobuyev, a Communist Party (KPRF) member of the Altai Krai Legislative Assembly, said he resigned from Barnaul School No. 103, where he taught geography, due to pressure from officials. The Siberian Express drew attention to a post on his Telegram channel, as noted in their report.

Volobuyev submitted his resignation from the school on 4 June. According to him, this happened after an ultimatum from the Barnaul Education Committee: either Volobuyev leaves, or the headteacher’s contract is not renewed.

“I don’t want to put the school at risk because of the arbitrariness of the ‘education’ officials,” the deputy wrote.

In his view, the reason for the ultimatum was his post about the low payments made to teachers working during exam sessions.

On the morning of 4 June, the outlet “Tolk” published an article about the low payments to teachers overseeing the Unified State Exam (EGE) and the Basic State Exam (OGE). Volobuyev told reporters he had overseen an exam himself and, for one day after tax, received only 108 roubles (about US$1):

“You can teach six lessons and get 700-800 roubles (about US$8-9). But here? You arrive at 8:30, the exam starts at 10:00, and lasts for three to four hours. Afterwards, when the students leave, you spend another 20-30 minutes wrapping things up, reading everything on camera, signing off—then you have to ‘report in’ at the exam headquarters. And at HQ, there can be a queue of organisers. So you might wait another four hours to finish your working day. In essence, for an eight-hour working day you get 108 roubles (about US$1). For one lesson—40 minutes—I get 193 roubles (about US$2), and here the workload is many times greater.”

Previously, Volobuyev spoke about working at Barnaul School No. 10. He explained that he hadn’t planned to work as a teacher permanently, but as a deputy, “had a good chance to experience for myself what it’s like to be a Russian teacher.” He worked at this school for about two months. The deputy noted that “with holiday pay, bonuses and so on,” he received about 30,000 roubles (about US$330) for this time: “If you break it down by months, the salary came to 13,000 roubles (about US$140).”