Education and Science, Latvia, Society

He did not give a precise number of schools which he believes must be shut-down, but added that they ''are not in the hundreds or the dozens''. He said that approximately 10 could be shut-down.

The politician admitted that he does not have a precise number of school pupils in each school, that is why he cannot be more precise regarding his optimization plans at this moment. However, he once again repeated what he said before – that children in grades one through four must have the opportunity to go to school as close to home as possible.

As reported, Sadurskis previously said that it will not be possible to avoid the closing down of some schools in Latvia.

Sadurskis said that he must be realistic. According to him, there must be an optimization of the school system. He said that Latvia just has too many small schools, which is mostly due to the population density in rural areas. Sadurskis said that it is not possible to change this population density, but outlines of possible cooperation scenarios by local governments should be made.

The politician pointed out that there are many half-empty schools on each side of local government borders. He said that these schools can be merged into one another. However, Sadurskis said that smaller schools should be retained from grades one through four, so that smaller children can begin their education closer to home.

Sadurskis said that he is not a revolutionary, and that revolutions within the education sector will not lead to anything positive. ''We must work systematically, so that we achieve results,'' he said.