What should be approach to the quality of education?

The latest briefing of the Minister of Science and Education Emin Amrullayev  on the eve of the new academic year attracted attention. The minister touched upon many problems in the field of education, starting with the certification of teachers and  up to the illiteracy of many of them.  He also touched on issues on behavior of school principals, teachers` salaries, student enrollment, shortage of teachers in the Russian sector, high demand for the Russian sector, and an excessive number of teachers in some places.

Are the issues raised by the minister the main issues affecting the quality of education?

In an interview with ASTNA, the education expert Nadir Israfilov shares his opinion on the issues raised by the minister at the briefing.

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Question: Which of the problems raised by the minister is fundamental and should be resolved immediately?

Answer: The briefing held by the  Minister clarified a number of issues of concern to the educational community and society as a whole, from the point of view of implementing the principles of humanism, democracy, openness, and transparency of our educational policy. Many issues raised at the briefing, from additional payments to the salaries of directors and their deputies up to certification, mistakes in education made by certain individuals, problems  during enrolling in educational institutions, the quality of education in Russian language, school uniforms remain relevant today. Some of the  raised issues  have not been resolved so far  because they  have been neglected for many years, as well as due to a number of mistakes and shortcomings on the ground.

Question: What main problems remained untouched by the minister?

Answer: It would be nice if the next briefings would highlight the reasons for the poor results shown by applicants in the entrance exams, the unpleasant negative incidents that have recently occurred in schools, the cooling of relations between the school and parents, the weight of the greater flourishing of tutoring, which is accepted by the people an informal area of ​​activity called the “black market of mental labor”, an “attribute of shadow education”, which, in fact, has a detrimental effect on the school environment, excessive workload of curricula and textbooks, clarify certain inconsistencies in test collections and program materials and other problems that are of concern to members of society, and prepare concrete proposals to address them. Many of the issues listed and not listed have been repeatedly put on the agenda. Since  many of the rules and laws that we adopt and apply do not have a working mechanism, they still remain on the paper.

Question: Today, the admission or transfer of teachers and students to schools has become electronic. The same rule is applied to the admission of children and teachers to kindergartens. However problems  and complaints in this area still remain. Do you think that all these steps are being taken to imitate the well-being? What should be done  so that the taken steps have an effect?

Answer: When hiring teachers, along with their theoretical knowledge and methodological training, a sample lesson in video format should be requested. Being a good mathematician or historian is not the same as being a good math or history teacher. If the school is the center of education and upbringing, then a “concept of upbringing” should be developed. Because our extreme passion for the learning process has pushed educational work into the background. While the process of learning also affects the process of education, just as the process of learning performs an educational function. Although in the 90s the Ministry of Education put forward the idea of developing a scientific-pedagogical and psychologically substantiated, modern "concept of education", and even developed its draft, nevertheless, subsequently, for unknown reasons, work in this direction was suspended.

Question: Question about the illiteracy of teachers. How to fix this problem? Do you think it is possible to grow high-quality and competent teaching staff from a student entering a university with 200-300 points?

Answer: I am personally against the expression "illiterate teacher", which has become infamous. This will be another blow to the teaching profession. It`s just that there are teachers with poor training, and there are not so few of them. The minister also stressed at the briefing that "the appearance of some teachers in front of schoolchildren is a sin." Of course, this is not the teacher`s fault, but the employer`s. Currently, the number of individuals with high scores who have become teachers has increased.

Question: And in conclusion, what do you propose? What should be done to ensure quality education in Azerbaijan?

Answer: The first thing we should do is change our view and approach to education. Attacks on the school, teachers should be stopped, all efforts should be combined to increase the authority of the school and  the teacher, because education is a nationwide problem. Also, we should gradually abandon the tradition of assessing the quality of education only on the basis of high scores, the number of applicants enrolled in universities with a score in the range of 500-700, since the score is a relative indicator and cannot be a criterion of quality. In mass pedagogical literature, “the quality of education is characterized as a social category that shows the state and effectiveness of the educational process in society, demonstrating the compliance of the civil, professional and everyday incompetence of the individual with the requirements of society.” Maybe we should treat quality the same way…?