Students at the Sirius Centre are pushed to excel, but also to remember where they come from
AFTER talking to India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, in Sochi earlier this week, Vladimir Putin took him to one of his favourite places: the Sirius Centre for Gifted Education. “We discussed regional and international issues,” Mr Modi said. “But when we were talking about Sirius, he had a special look on his face.”
The centre offers intensive month-long courses to Russian students who demonstrate special talent in maths, science, sport or the arts. They live in a former four-star hotel and work in top-of-the-line laboratories in the former press centre built for the 2014 Winter Olympics. Elena Shmeleva, Sirius’s director, speaks proudly of its project-based learning and focus on new technologies. A full-time school will open in the autumn. The goal, Ms Shmeleva says, is to set an example for the whole country.
The project has had Mr Putin’s attention from the start; he is said to have come up with the idea, and even the name, and personally interviewed Ms Shmeleva for her job. He also heads the board of trustees, and this week’s visit was at least his ninth since 2015. “Hardly a month passes when he doesn’t check in on what’s happening here,” says Ms Shmeleva. Donors include Russia’s leading companies. “Everyone put money into it,” says one ex-official.
Yet Sirius is not the Potemkin Village it might seem. Instead, it serves as an example of effective authoritarian modernisation. On one Saturday this month, students crowded to hear a lecture on neural networks by a visiting specialist from Yandex, Russia’s leading internet firm. In nearby labs, one group assembled micro-satellites, while another huddled around a spectrometer for a course in biomedicine.
Sirius marries the two sides of Mr Putin’s vision for education. Students are pushed to be globally competitive; yet they are reminded of where they come from. “Always remember that you have a Home—your family, your friends, your city, your ‘Sirius’, your Russia,” reads part of the school’s code. “Succeed for their sake and always return to your Home.”