Following a procedural check the investigating bodies of the Russia’s Investigative Committee for the Volgograd Region have launched a criminal investigation into driving a 16-year-old boy to suicide, who killed himself reportedly because of single state exams (article 110 of the RF Penal Code).
On 29 May, about 10 PM, on the outskirts of the town of Zhirnovsk in the Volgograd Region, the teenager was found hanged from a tree. Investigators looked into the circumstances of his death most carefully and concluded that the teenager killed himself under strong emotional shock connected with school exams. The investigators have already questioned the teenager’s parents, friends, teachers and classmates. They have found that on that day he together with other students took a Russian language examination. Late in the day he called his friends from his cell phone telling that he was going to kill himself as he thought that he had failed the exam. He also stated the approximate area where his body to have been found. Half an hour later his found his body. The teenager’s conditions of life have been studied and it has been found that he lived in full family, his parents are reported to be good people, the teenager had not attempted suicide before neither had he expressed any intentions to commit it.
Of course, graduates have to prepare for their exams, reading intensively or having additional classes with teachers. But they should also be prepared for them psychologically. This task cannot be entirely loaded to parents alone as not every one of them has pedagogical or other special education to be capable of preparing teenager’s immature psyche to this kind of stress. Teachers and representatives of psychological service have to play here the most active part. Therefore, the investigators are going to give tough legal assessment to the actions of the school staff and psychologists, as well as officials of the Volgograd Region Ministry of Education and Science. They will also analyze actions of superior bodies charged with controlling observance of laws in the area of education so that no similar cases happen ever again in Russia.
Head of Media Relations V.I. Markin
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