Kristine Aghalaryan
Grisha Balasanyan 

This is the fifth year that 14 year-old Rouben Boudoyan won’t be going to school.

Instead, he’s become a shepherd in the Gegharkounik village of Metz Masrik.

Rouben told us, in literary Armenian, that despite this educational detour, he wants to attend school and even dreams about becoming an attorney one day.

His sister, 15 year-old Zhenya, also doesn’t go to school. The teenager can’t even write her own name.

Karineh Boudoyan, their mother, says the family can’t afford to buy the clothes and school supplies the kids need. She says that the family can barely send a third child to school.

We visited the family one year ago and nothing seems to have changed since. Some of the windows in the house, in which the families of the two brothers Alexander and Friedrich live, still have no glass. The chickens enter and exit the dwelling as they please.

Despite these conditions, village residents told us that the families are the wealthiest because they raise cows. It’s just that they can’t manage their resources wisely.

Local school Principal Atom Hakobyan blames the parents for the kids not attending classes and claims that it has nothing to do with a lack of clothes or school supplies

Hakobyan told us that Zhenya is a special needs student and that they had scheduled an educational examination in Yerevan. He claims the parents have never taken her.

This raises the following question. If Zhenya is indeed a student with special needs how has she reached the ninth grade? And it appears that the school has been covering up the long absences of both Rouben and his sister.

Furthermore, according to their official report cards, the two children are doing quite well in school. Zhenya, who can’t even write her name in Armenia, is doing excellent in her English class, according to her grades. Rouben’s report card is full of similar normal marks as well.

When he quizzed Principal Hakobyan about the incongruity of this he floundered around for a rational answer.

Rouben has graduated to the 10^th grade while Zhenya has been left back. The village school receives financing based on the number of students enrolled.

Principal Hakobyan was quick to deny that the school was artifi8cially keeping the two kids on the school’s enrollment book just to receive more state funding.

Village Mayor Misha Khloyan backed up the principal’s claim, adding that the family was not being neglected by the local municipality

Mayor Khloyan confessed that the family is an "embarrassment" to the commun9ity but that he has no idea how to get the children back to school.

"What can I do? Should I deprive the parents of custody? What would you do in my shoes?" asked the mayor.

Principal Hakobyan also sits on the municipal council but says that they have never discussed the children’s dilemma. He says that the time has come when he must personally tackle the issue.

But the fact remains that the non-attendance issue hasn’t been formally registered with any state agency.

According to a report issued by the Gegharkounik Regional Administration, there were no absentee school children in the entire province during the 2011-2012 school year.

This is hard to believe.

We definitely know about Rouben and Zhenya. We also know that there are others in the same village not attending school.

We just don’t know their names.