F ears over a law that gives public schools greater financial autonomy from the government have been stoked by an incendiary blog post widely quoted on the Internet. The author wrote that parents should expect to pay an extra 6,000-7,000 roubles ($200 to $250) a month to educate their children.

Parents’ groups fear that state education is being privatised by stealth, yet supporters of the law argue that where the parents see a slippery slope, the measures will just give schools greater flexibility to choose their curriculum and allocate their resources.

“The only thing that a child will now receive for free are several basic subjects,” wrote the author.

Apart from several hours per week of Russian, English, maths, physical education and history, which will remain free, other subjects will require fees. “For subjects like art, music, programming, physics, chemistry, biology and others, parents will have to pay. According to initial data, the cost of studying per month will be around 6,000- 7,000 roubles.”

Under Federal Law No. 83, passed in May 2010, public schools were given financial autonomy to disburse government funds as they see fit. Critics said that schools would begin charging parents for courses to stay above water, or to make extra money on the side.

Parents’ groups organised hasty efforts last summer to fight the legislation, which they argue pushed off its implementation until this year. The law is dangerous because it threatens to exacerbate class differences and disenfranchise poorer parents, said Maria Medvedeva, a spokeswoman for the Parents of Russia group. “People are really disturbed by this, firstly because for people this is a lot of money, and secondly because children are going to see at a very young age whose parents have money and whose parents don’t,” she said.

Some schools have already started to offer additional lessons for paying students. A new survey published by Novaya Gazeta showed that schools are increasingly asking parents for money, which they considered “the first results of the reforms of budgeted institutions in Russia.”

Of more than 1,600 parents interviewed, 77 percent noted a rise in education-related expenses, which “as a minimum was close to 20 percent”.

“The main causes for expenses were tutoring and additional paid courses,” which parents believed were imposed on their children under “false pretences”, Novaya Gazeta reported.

Irina, a teacher in a northern Moscow school, said that some courses would be shortened this year (English classes have been cut from three hours a week to two), and that parents have been sent forms asking them which extra courses they would be interested in sending their children to and how much they would be willing to pay. The school has also retained an accountant for the coming school year.

Advocacy groups see a slippery slope into for-profit education. “The new legislation supposes that educational institutions will [operate as] commercial enterprises. This does not seem very realistic to me,” Natalya Tipenko, director of the Centre for Universal Programmes, told RIA Novosti.

Experts and parent groups say the new law will also make life much more difficult for rural schools.

“Of course, for small schools the problem is that the number of students is not large, and what we might call a more ‘flexible approach’ will actually be quite difficult. They’ve already begun complaining about a lack of qualified teachers and other issues,” said Roman Selyukov, director of the Eureka research group.