The RA State Educational Awards ceremony was held today at the Prime Minister’s residence. The winners were awarded in the Best PhD, Best Master, Best Bachelor and Best Student nominations by Acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan personally.

In his speech, Nikol Pashinyan stated, in part:

“Dear Awardees,
Dear Jury Members,
Dear Guests,

First of all, I congratulate the lecturers and teachers, our students and pupils who have been awarded the Educational Prize of the Republic of Armenia in the field of information technology. I think the organizers and sponsors of the awards are worthy of gratitude and kind remarks. They have done a great and important work over many years for the sake of our common future.

Also, I am thanking all those who have supported this initiative to some extent. For many of our prize winners, or perhaps for everyone, this is the first professional success.

Dear winners, I wish you to develop this success throughout your professional career. Our society believes that the IT sector should boast progressive developmental to become one of the key pillars of our knowledge-based economy. It is conditioned not only by the lack of natural resources in our country, but also by the need to keep pace with the modern world.

Freedom is the first and most important achievement of our revolution. Progress in the political, economic, and intellectual development of the modern world has become almost impossible. But I want to address the circumstance what freedom means in this situation and what everybody needs in the conditions of freedom. The perception of reality is very important, and I especially want to say that in a free environment, the most important component of human success is that each one of us should do his own job. That is to say, in the conditions of freedom, the greatest pledge of success is the man himself.

Freedom is freedom where anyone can choose his own effort, his own principles, his motive, his will, his perception of the environment and his respect for others, each person decides how much he will succeed and where he will succeed. At the same time, this exception does not apply to all spheres, from science to politics and economy.

Of course, this does not mean that the state has nothing to do. The number one task of the state is first of all to create equal opportunities for all, and then gradually increasing the range of opportunities available for all to a new level and new levels.

And it is very important today to record. We have tens of thousands of students in our schools, thousands of students in our universities, then what is the reason that these very people are being awarded today?

Of course there is no doubt that the prize-winners are talented, but no one can say that the scope of our students 'and students' talent is limited to today's prize winners. And what is their peculiarity? What has brought them here today?

In my opinion, the peculiarity is as follows: they decided to deal with them, they made a decision that they wanted to have such a success and they were more principled, more consistent, and more diligent in implementing that decision.
This is very important because in New Armenia this is the guarantee of success. The key to success in the new Armenia is not who is the relative who has the opportunity to communicate with whom or how long or how often he or she is treated.

In the new Armenia, in the conditions of freedom, each person determines his own limit of success, each person determines the scale of his universe, each person determines where he should stand, where he is tired and where he should continue with new zeal. This is the most important feature in New Armenia for every person, every citizen. And I would like to thank all our winners for making a decision and enough effort to implement that decision.

I urge them to never step back in the face of any obstacle, or restrictions, because our greatest task is not at all to decide what can be done and what is just impossible, but to state our goals and extend the limit of our possibilities, because human mind and the aspiration to victory allow for no limits in the modern world, and our greatest task is to constantly expand the limits of our capabilities.

Therefore, dear attendees, I highly appreciate this award. I am once again thanking all those who have endeavored to materialize the idea of having such a prize by setting the bar higher from year to year.

I hope, I am convinced that the benchmark will be raised every year. I congratulate the organizers, the winners and all of us.

Thank you.”

The award ceremony is held for the 14th time this year, after being renamed into RA State Educational Award in Information Technology. 106 students from Armenia’s 6 leading universities, as well as 80 schoolchildren from 8 Physics and Mathematics-based schools attended the award ceremony. This year 25 students and 18 pupils have been awarded State educational prizes. A total of 489 students and pupils have so far won this award.