KAZAN – THE GREAT EDUCATIONAL CENTRE OF RUSSIA.Bulat Zakirov Form 8ATeacher: Abdullaeva T. I.

Kazan is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Tatarstan. With a population of 1,143,546, it is the eighth most populous city in Russia. Kazan lies at the confluence of the Volga and Kazanka Rivers in European Russia.

Mystery about Kazan is its name. Scientists have been discussing the meaning of the word “Kazan”. Most of them support the common translation of this word from Tatar as “a big bowl”. As a matter of fact, if you look at Kazan from a plane, you’ll notice that the city is located in the lowland among the hill. Besides, the Kremlin Hill looks like an upturned cauldron too.

The city's population consists almost entirely composed of either Russians (about 48.8 percent) or Tatars (about 47.5 percent). The remainder consists of Chuvash, Ukrainians, Azeri, and Jews. Major religions in Kazan city are Sunni Islam and Eastern Orthodoxy.

Tatar and Russian languages are widely spoken in the city. Russian is understood by practically all the population, apart from some older Tatars. Tatar is widely spoken mainly by Tatars.

Kazan has a humid continental climate with long cold winters and warm, often hot dry summers. The warmest month is July with daily mean temperature near 20 °C (68 °F), coldest - January −12 °C (10 °F).

Primary and secondary education system of Kazan includes:

282 nurseries, most of which are municipal

178 schools, 2 of which are private

28 vocational technical schools

15 colleges 10 special colleges

As I’ve said Kazan is one of the biggest educational centre in Russia. And in my presentation I paid a special attention to this theme and to speak about educational system in Kazan.

There are also 49 music schools, 10 fine-arts schools and 43 sports schools. There are 44 institutes of higher education in Kazan, including 19 branches of universities from other cities. More than 140 000 students are educated in the city.

Kazan Federal University (founded in 1804) is third oldest university in Russia after Saint Petersburg State University (1724) and Moscow State University (1755). In 2009 KFU got Federal status as main university of Volga Region.

Some other prominent universities are:

Kazan State Technical University - founded in 1932. In 2009 it got status of National university;

Kazan State Medical University - founded in 1814 as a department within Kazan State University;

Kazan State Technological University - founded in 1919 on the base of pre-existing vocational school;

Kazan State Conservatory - founded in 1945;

Kazan is a major scientific centre in Russia. Kazan formed a big number of scientific areas and schools.

It is subject of special pride: the creation of non-Euclidean geometry (Nikolai Lobachevski), the discovery of the chemical element ruthenium (Claus), the theory about the structure of organic compounds (Aleksandr Butlerov), the discovery of the electron paramagnetic resonance (Yevgeny Zavoisky) and acoustic paramagnetic resonance (Altshuler) and many others.