Children of migrants
If the test was not passed
If the test shows an insufficient level of Russian, the child is not enrolled and the parents are offered extra tuition in Russian. The test can be retaken no earlier than three months later — the deadline comes from the testing procedure.
Three months is exactly the time people prepare in. Not «some day», but until the next attempt.
What follows from this
What the law says about extra tuition, and what it does not. The tuition is named in the law, but who provides it, where and at whose expense is not. Russia has no single publicly funded preparation programme of the kind newcomer classes in the USA and Canada rely on. We cannot promise anything on a school's behalf: ask the school and the local education authority what they can offer.
Where to start on your own. By the specifications, the speaking pass mark is 9 of 10 in every grade, and the written part cannot make it up. So the speaking part is what has to be pulled up first: dialogue, monologue, reading aloud and retelling. All of it is on each grade page, with voice recording and feedback.
What is usually lost. Not vocabulary but format: one-word answers instead of full sentences, words skipped when reading aloud, retelling that ignores the plan. That trains faster than the language as a whole.
The speaking part, year by year
Speaking tasks by grade:
Where to go next
The section's main page is School entry testing for children. The documents that turn more applications away than language does are here.
Frequently asked questions
When can the test be retaken?
No earlier than three months after the test that showed an insufficient level.
Must the school teach the child Russian before the retake?
Extra tuition is named in the law, but the mechanism and the funding are not defined in the documents. What a particular school can offer is a question for that school and for the education authority.
Can we go to another school and take the test there?
The test is run by the school at enrolment, and the three-month period counts from the failed test, not from the school. Changing schools does not reset it.
Does the child study during those three months?
They were not enrolled in a Russian school, so formally no. That is the real price of a failed attempt, and the reason to prepare before the first one.
How much does preparation cost here?
The speaking part and the feedback are free, with no sign-up and no limit on attempts. We do not promise enrolment: the mark is set by the school commission.
The three-month period comes from the testing procedure (clause 22). The test numbers were checked on 22 September 2026.