ABSTRACT
Following the failure of the rashly implemented "polytechnics! school reform" of 1958/59 under Khrushchev, Soviet education policy after 1966 was characterized for about a decade by the "stability and continuity" demanded by the Party leadership: Long-term and more comprehensive reform objectives took a back seat to the expansion of the existing school system, to the demands for increases in instruction quality and performance, in vocational training, and to efforts towards an increasingly political-ideological education. The sweeping effectuation of compulsory education for at least ten years for juveniles, which can be acquired in the existing general and vocational schools ("full secondary education"), was considered the main achievement of the seventies: In the ten grades of secondary school, in the part-time general evening or shift-secondary school, in the secondary vocational-technical training institutions, or in the secondary technical schools. The two last types of schools also provide "general secondary education" together with their main objective of a professional qualification.
