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The situation in Azerbaijan concerning EFA and the
follow up actions that were agreed to at the Jomtien conference in 1990 is
significantly different from many other countries and requires explanation.
In 1990 Azerbaijan was part of the former Soviet Union and was not directly
represented at the Jomtien conference, but indirectly represented by the
participation of Russian educators. Indeed, senior educational managers and
policy makers from Azerbaijan had no inputs to the Jomtien conference and
were not aware that the conference had taken place. Following independence
in 1991, Azerbaijan was preoccupied with two major crises: the impacts of
the war with Armenia and the transition to the market economy. These
preoccupations were also evident in the Ministry of Education. Given this
situation in Azerbaijan during the 1990’s, it is not surprising that the
plans of action ratified by others at the Jomtien conference were not a
priority.
As a result, the current cohort of senior
educational managers and policy makers in Azerbaijan first became aware of
the Jomtien EFA goals and plans of action during a UNESCO meeting in
Tashkent in 1998. It was at this meeting that the requirements for EFA
reporting and assessment procedures for EFA – 2000 were being discussed.
Further follow-up took place during 1999 when UNICEF initiated a task force
meeting with the involvement of the five organisers: WB, UNDP, UNFPA,
UNESCO and UNICEF together with the Ministry of Education. Several regular
meetings took place between the Cabinet of Ministers and the Ministry of
Education and UNICEF at senior levels, including technical meetings.
Despite being uninvolved in earlier activities of EFA, Azerbaijan readily
agreed to become involved and to take part in the EFA 2000 Assessment
process. At the end of May 1999, the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic
of Azerbaijan issued an instruction to establish a formal working group for
the EFA National Assessment. This working group comprised representatives
from the following organisations:
·
Ministry of Education;
·
Ministry of Economy;
·
Ministry of Finance;
·
Ministry of Youth and Sports;
·
Ministry of Culture;
·
Internal Affairs Ministry;
·
Ministry of
Agriculture;
·
Ministry of Labour and Social Defense of the Population;
·
Ministry of Health Care;
·
Defense Ministry;
·
Executive Power of the City of Baku;
·
The Academy of Sciences; and
·
State Statistics Committee.
This working group was under the organizational
guidance of the Ministry of Education and its first task was to appoint a
National Assessment Coordinator; the Deputy Minister of Education - Mr.
Iskander Iskanderov. The complete list of members of this working group is
provided in Annex 1. This working group began to collect information and
received technical assistance from UNESCO and UNICEF in July 1999 during a
meeting in Baku, Azerbaijan. UNICEF, UNFPA and UNESCO provided further
technical assistance through the services of a specialist to support the
National Assessment Working Group in the preparation of its report. Thus,
the entire national assessment process has had to occur within the very
short time period, May to September 1999.
As a result of the above situation, this report
provides information on educational development in Azerbaijan during the
time period 1990 to 1998 with a focus on early childhood development
programs, primary education and literacy, rather than on specific EFA
activities. However, the philosophy of education in Azerbaijan and its
constitutional protection are consistent with the goals and aims of EFA and
therefore this project report will be relevant to the global EFA 2000
assessment process. To ensure the maximum relevancy and for consistency
with other country reports, the analytical section is based upon the 18
core indicators specified in the technical guidelines provided by UNESCO.
The development of education, and in particular
the achievement of the goals of universal education at pre-school and
primary levels in Azerbaijan during the decade covered by the Jomtien
declaration have been hindered by a number of events. It should be noted that
prior to the 1990 Jomtien declaration, education in Azerbaijan was already
highly developed. In fact adult literacy levels had reached 83% in 1939 and
in 1989 were at 99.6%. However, the decade of the 1990s has proved to be
one of the most difficult in Azerbaijan’s history since education, together
with all sectors, has had to face a number of challenges brought about by:
·
the Armenian aggression;
·
the loss of 20% of its territory (including 616 general secondary schools
and 300 other educational institutions);
·
a large inflow of refugees and internally displaced persons following
this aggression;
·
hyperinflation;
·
transition to a market economy; and
·
the collapse of trading partners brought about by the collapse of the
former Soviet Union.
Thus, the major challenge to education during the
decade of the 1990’s has been to minimise the decline in educational
development given these difficulties. While the period of the 1990’s has
been difficult for education, it is not without hope since in recent times
a number of international oil contracts have been signed for utilisation of
the oil reserves that have been discovered in the Caspian Sea. Thus, the
economic future of Azerbaijan appears to be moving to a better future and
this should allow educational reform to be implemented and participation in
education to be expanded, thus achieving the goals of EFA.
In 1999 the population of Azerbaijan was approximately
8 million persons living in 5 major cities and 65 districts, including the
Autonomous Republic of Nakhchivan. There are 4,610 schools and 1.6 million
students covering 11 years of free and compulsory education. Of these 11
years, grades 1 to 4 constitute primary education (the focus of this
report), grades 5 to 9 are lower secondary education and grades 10 and 11
are upper secondary education. Basic education is grades 1 to 9. In
addition to general education, in 1999 there are 48 higher education
institutions of which 17 are private, 74 technical professional schools and
colleges and 118 vocational schools and Lyceums. There are also special
schools for those with learning difficulties and boarding schools for those
students in need. Since 1989, gifted children are able to attend special
classes and/or special schools. School for gifted students have a duration
of 11 years and it is possible for gifted students to skip years and
complete general education in less than 11 calendar years. There are
special boarding schools for handicapped children, such as children with
visual, hearing or speaking disabilities. In remote areas where the density
of handicap is low, special classes are provided in regular schools.
The Education Reform Project commenced at the
beginning of the 1999/2000 school year (September) and involves all grade 1
teachers (9,400) and students (170,000). This reform project is being
introduced in a phased approach and more detail concerning this project is
provided in Part III of this report.
The administrative structure of education in
Azerbaijan involves a number of different stakeholders. At the national
level, the following are involved:
Ministry of Education
During the Soviet era, the Ministry of Education
had primary responsibility for all aspects of education. Since
independence, the District Education Offices have taken over the role of
implementing education programs, monitoring and inspecting the system. The
Ministry of Education has responsibility for development and publication of
curricula and syllabuses, textbooks, methodological manuals, for the
quality of education, initial and in-service training of teaching
personnel, for attestation, accreditation and licensing of educational
institutions and realization of some other issues. Since the Presidential
order of 1998 to instigate an education sector reform project, the Ministry
of Education has been focussing on the processes required to support such a
reform. More detail concerning the nature of this reform is provided in
Part III of this report.
The Ministry of Finance is responsible for
allocating funding to schools, early childhood education institutions and
other educational institutions. For early childhood education institutions
and general schools, this allocation takes place through the District
Finance Offices.
At other levels, the following bodies are
involved:
The Chief of each District Education Office is
appointed by the Ministry of Education upon the recommendation of the local
executive body, although the complete budget for the office is provided
from the Executive Committee of the District whose Chief is appointed by
the President of Azerbaijan. The formal mechanism for communication and
information flow between the District Education Offices and the Ministry of
Education occurs through both annual reports concerning early childhood
development programs and general education and dissemination of appropriate
norms by the Ministry of Education.
District Education Offices are responsible for
managing all early childhood development programs and general educational
institutions in the district. This office is also responsible for school
guidance and supervision.
The Education Law of 1992 has promoted a model of
decentralisation that allows schools to have considerable control. Schools
are responsible for hiring and firing of teaching staff and are also able
to propose changes to improve the curriculum and educational programs.
Although schools have been given more responsibility and autonomy, many
school directors need to upgrade their skills in administration, finance
and management since many come from teaching backgrounds. Thus, there is a
need to provide appropriate training courses for school directors.
The Law on Education in 1992 provided for the
creation of School Councils to support a decentralised model. School
councils are comprised of teachers, parents, students and representatives
of social organisations. The roles of school councils include strengthening
the material basis of schools, providing proposals for the solution of
pedagogical and economic problems, and to facilitate the introduction of a
democratic system of management.
Education is funded through two sources: the
Republican budget and local city or district-level budgets. General
schools and early childhood education institutions are funded primarily
through local budgets although in cases where a deficit is created, financial
subsidies can be made from the Republican budget. Technical and vocational
schools together with higher education institutions are funded solely by
the Republican budget.
The salary component is the major part of general
school funding. The number of classes determines the number of teachers in
individual schools with class size in urban areas being 25 to 30 students
while class size in rural and remote areas is more flexible. Alongside with
the number of classes, the teaching load also determines the number
of teachers required in a school. Teachers are normally required to teach a
minimum of 12 hours per week and can teach in more than one shift.
Typically, most schools work in two shifts per day. There are also schools
working in three shifts.
Schools provide their budget requests each year to
the District Education Office who then pass these to the District Finance
Office. The District Finance Office is responsible for defining individual
school budgets within the context of determining the complete District
budget, although the District Education Office also has some input to this
process. The District Education Office is then responsible for payment of
teacher salaries through school directors and for school running-costs such
as electricity, water, heating, etc. Annual budget reports are provided to
the District Finance Office. Since 1997, schools have been permitted to
have individual school bank accounts although these are special accounts
rather than budget accounts. These accounts can be used for funding
provided by sponsors, parents, companies, etc. Funding is used to improve
the material basis of schools. Not all schools have established these
special accounts and among those schools that do have these accounts, the
amount varies considerably.
Although each District Education Office is
responsible for payment of non-salary items for all schools in the
district, the reality is that this budget is in deficit. As a result of
this deficit, there is no funding for maintenance of school facilities and
little funding for school supplies and learning materials. Thus, the
quality of school facilities has deteriorated during the decade.
Under the constitution of 1995, general education
continues to be free and therefore there are no school fees. In primary
education (grades 1 to 4) textbooks are provided free of charge to all
students while in secondary education (grades 5 to 11) families must
purchase textbooks. There are also no “hidden” school-level fees such as
maintenance fees, administration fees, etc.
The difficult situation that Azerbaijan has faced
during the decade of the 1990’s has attracted the attention of the
international community. In particular, about 1 million of the population
are considered as refugees or internally displaced with no permanent peace
agreement yet concluded. The size of this refugee problem can be better
understood by considering that at the beginning of 1999 some 85,000
children attended 700 temporary schools situated within refugee camps.
These schools operate in very difficult conditions. The need for urgent
accommodation has also meant that 53,000 people now live in what were
formally school buildings. In addition, a World Bank 1997 study classified
some 60% of the population as being poor with one third of this number
being “very poor”. The economic crisis brought about by the collapse of the
former Soviet Union has caused political and social instability and
introduced a new phenomenon for the country, that of child labour. GDP
growth contracted by about 20% annually during the period 1992 through 1994
with annual rates of inflation reaching more than 1000% in 1993 and 1994.
Beginning from 1994, the economic situation has stabilised. At the same
time, the future for Azerbaijan is optimistic with net financial benefits
from the Azerbaijan State Oil Company’s joint venture expected to flow into
the economy during the second half of the next decade, 2005 -2010. Thus,
there is concern among various stakeholders for ensuring that the
deterioration in education is minimised during this interim period and that
the benefits of a renewed economy will be able to be absorbed by the
education system quickly and efficiently.
Within this context, the programs of UNICEF have
focussed on providing advice and guidance for design models of social
policy reform and efficient, effective implementation of these reform
activities. Across all programs, UNICEF has also endeavoured to promote the
Convention of the Rights of the Child. UNICEF has supported the
Ministry of Education to develop and implement a series of television
programs specifically designed for pre-school development in order to
offset the decline in the number of children attending formal early
childhood development programs. To arrest the deterioration of the system
and to improve the quality of education, UNICEF has assisted the Ministry
of Education to establish goals for the decentralisation of management and
improvement in school level management. A pilot project in five schools has
been used to exemplify these new techniques. In redesigning the system, the
following principles were applied:
·
Introduction of self-financing mechanisms at the school level in the form
of conditional matching grants;
·
Decentralisation of financial and administrative management through opening
of school bank accounts;
·
Rationalisation of the district education structure to be more
cost-effective; and
·
Improved community participation through school committees to apply the
self-financing systems in schools and to contribute community resources.
Other international organisations have also been
active in educational development in Azerbaijan over the decade. The UNHCR
was involved in provision of education in refugee camps and continues to do
so until the present time given that almost 1 million of the total
population are still considered as refugees or internally displaced
persons. UNESCO has assisted the Ministry of Education through a program
for retraining of teachers. The Soros Foundation has been active in
Azerbaijan providing support for improving methodological issues,
curriculum design and training of teachers through foreign placements. The
Council of Europe has provided programs for educational managers at all
levels and foreign language training in Azerbaijan has been supported
through the activities of the British Council, The German Program for
Exchange and the French Embassy. “Freedom Support”, a USA – based NGO
also provides exchange programs for approximately 50 students from
Azerbaijan each year.
NGOs are active in Azerbaijan but their
involvement tends to be directly with schools or specific districts and no consolidated
data is easily obtainable. However, several NGO’s have collaborated with
UNICEF and these include World Vision International, BUTA, Women
and Development and KAINAT. A number of international oil
companies have also provided support to individual schools.
Total enrolments and the gross enrolment ratio in
early childhood education programs have both declined significantly over
the decade. The number of institutions offering these programs has also
declined with 10% of all urban institutions and 20% of all rural
institutions closing since 1993. Participation in early childhood
development programs in rural areas is particularly low compared to urban
areas. In all areas of the Republic, fewer girls than boys attend early
childhood education programs and this disparity is particularly significant
in urban areas.
The constitution allows private sector involvement
at this level of education, however, private sector involvement in early
childhood development programs in Azerbaijan is virtually unknown, a result
of the philosophy inherited during the Soviet era.
Part II Analysis
Azerbaijan is an
independent Republic of approximately 86,600 km2, situated in
the southeastern area of the Caucasus region with the Caspian Sea on the
eastern border. It has an administrative structure that includes 5 major
cities and 65 districts, including the Autonomous Republic of Nakhchivan.
In 1999, the total population of Azerbaijan was approximately 8 million
with 4,610 schools and a total of 1,600,000 students. More than 50% of the
population live in urban areas. Formal education consists of 11 years and
by law is free and compulsory. Primary education consists of the first 4
years of this period. The population growth rate in Azerbaijan has
decreased from an annual rate of 2.0% in 1990 to 0.98% in 1998, however
this is not yet reflected in a lower dependency ratio for children. This
dependency ratio for children has remained at a high 65% across the decade
of the 1990’s. The elderly dependency ratio has increased from 18.5% in
1990 to 20.7% in 1998.
A number of issues are relevant to this analytical
section since they directly impact on the types of analysis that can be
applied to the data. The conflict with Armenia concerning the
Nagarno-Karabakh began in 1988 and tensions continue through to the present
time. A direct result of the loss of this territory was an influx of
refugees and a large number of internally displaced persons, including many
school children, an influx that continued well into the middle of the
1990’s. This, together with the significant inflow of returning emigrants
following the collapse of the former Soviet Union reduces the
meaningfulness of a traditional cohort analysis for the majority of the
decade. Since the number of refugees and returning emigrants was not
quantified in accordance with age and gender, it is not possible to
separate these from students belonging to the original cohorts, hence the
problem of applying a traditional cohort analysis.
For the data analysis for the EFA 2000 report, it
was decided to collect the data on a national basis rather than a district
basis and wherever possible to provide data separately for urban and rural
areas. Information is collected from schools and early childhood
development institutions every year using specially designed forms. There
are also forms used by District Education Offices to consolidate
district-wide data. These forms are sent to both the Ministry of Education
and the State Statistics Committee. Financial information is collected by
District Finance Offices and sent to both the Ministry of Finance and the
State Statistics Committee. For the EFA 2000 assessment process, the State
Statistics Committee was the lead agency for data collection.
In this report, the following definitions were
used:
Urban:
Schools within the 5 major cities of Azerbaijan and the central towns of
each of the 65 districts; and
Rural:
Villages and other settlements of the 65 districts of the country. Within
each district, this represents all areas outside of the district centre.
Data has been collected for the period 1990 to
1998 and analyses presented in this report are based on this period unless
otherwise indicated.
The overall growth of enrolments in early
childhood education programs is shown in Figure 1.2. The decline in the
number of students enrolled in early childhood development programs can be
clearly seen from this figure. The slight increase in enrolments in 1993
can be attributed to the inflow of refugees and internally displaced
persons following the Armenian aggression. This overall decline in
enrolments in early childhood development over the period 1990 to 1998 is
similar to the experience of many countries comprising the former Soviet
Union.
It can also be seen from Figure 1.2 that girls are
disadvantaged in access to early childhood development with significantly
fewer places in early childhood development than for boys. This difference
in enrolments was about 15,000 places in the early 1990’s, 11,000 in
1995/96 and had shrunk to 8,000 places in 1998. Of interest is the
likelihood that this decrease in the gap between boys and girls access to
early childhood development will be sustained over the next years.
This decline in enrolments in early childhood
development over the 1990s is increasing what is already a significant
shortfall in places in early childhood development programs. The extent of
this problem is demonstrated in Figure 1.3. It can be seen that while the
population of 3 year-old children was reduced in 1997, this was a temporary
reduction with an increase being seen in 1998 of some 0.9%. The population
of young children has been influenced by changes in fertility rates and by
the inflow of refugees and internally displaced persons following the
Armenian aggression.
This decline in participation in early childhood
development programs is due to a number of factors. Formerly some
enterprises, offices and organizations operated early childhood development
programs in which were enrolled the children of their employees. But due to
the financial difficulties of the transition period the early childhood
development programs operating under the auspices of those enterprises have
been closed. In addition, following the lowering or cease of production,
unemployment has increased with one or two unemployed parents now at home.
As a result, the children in these families are not sent to participate in
early childhood development programs.
The proportion of children attending early
childhood development programs can be expressed as a gross enrolment ratio
and this is shown in Figure 1.4. Not surprisingly, the figure shows
the same downward trends as discussed earlier.
Gross enrolment ratios for participation in early
childhood development programs can be used to assess the differences
between access in rural and urban areas and this is shown in Figure 1.5.
Figure 1.5 clearly shows the lower access to early childhood development
programs for children in rural areas. The only consolation for rural
children is that the decline in GER for early childhood development
programs has decreased at a lower average annual rate (-3.5%) than the GER
in urban areas (-4.8%). The overall decline in the GER early childhood
development participants was due to the closure of many offices and
enterprises, the majority of which were located in urban areas.
It can be seen from Figure 1.7 that the financial
situation also caused a number of early childhood education institutions to
close. There was a particular severe retraction of institutions in rural
areas in 1994 although since that time, the reduction of early childhood
education institutions has continued at a similar rate for urban and rural
areas. In 1998, more serious measures have been taken to reverse this
trend.
The major issue facing early childhood development
in Azerbaijan is to reverse the negative trend of provision and
participation. Total enrolments and GER have both declined significantly over
the period and in the latest data available (1998) there is little evidence
that this decline is being challenged. Only among girls, has there been a
reversal of the constant decline in enrolments and GER. Provision and
participation in early childhood development in rural areas is particularly
low (GER of less than 10% since 1994) compared to urban areas (GER of
almost 25%). A further issue relates to gender parity. In all areas of the
country, fewer girls than boys attend early childhood education programs
and this disparity is particularly significant in urban areas.
It is clear that participation in early childhood
development programs will not increase without additional funding,
presumably from outside of the public sector. Private sector involvement in
education in Azerbaijan is virtually unknown, a result of the philosophy
inherited during the Soviet era. However, for early childhood development
programs to be significantly expanded, privatized enterprises will need to
be involved. A top priority should be to develop a model of private sector
involvement that is appropriate for Azerbaijan.
The efficiency of early childhood development
programs has improved over the 1990 to 1998 period. The number of 7-year
old children enrolled in programs has reduced from 7% to 1% although the
number of 6-year olds continues at about 25% of all enrolments.
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