National defense to be compulsory subject in Latvian schools

From September this year, national defense will be a compulsory subject in schools, according to the amendments to the general secondary education standard approved by the government on Tuesday April 16.

School management will be able to choose to run the course as an extracurricular subject or to reduce the number of classes in other subjects.

National defence training will be one of the core courses in the Health, Safety and Physical Activity teaching area and will be taught for 8 lessons one day a month for two consecutive school years, with 112 lessons to be taught, the Ministry of Education and Science said in a press release.

Schools will be able to choose between two options: implement national defense education outside the school day or reduce the number of teaching hours in other subjects by 20%, by including national defense in the teaching load. The schools will be able to choose which subjects to reduce.

After the cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Prime Minister Evika Siliņa (New Unity) told the media that there had been a lot of talk recently about the need to strengthen pupils’ knowledge of what national defense is so that they are better prepared and have a good knowledge of the basic needs in a crisis.

Via LSM