OMM Redaksiyası
“A transition to 12-year education is not currently on the agenda. It is included in the strategy and has been written down, but no such transition is planned in the coming months.”
"Operative Information Center-OMM" reports that Education and Science Minister Emin Amrullayev made the remarks at a news conference on the new academic year.
He said the possibility of three-year bachelor’s programs was being discussed. “This is an interesting discussion. Several issues, including the graduate’s age, need to be taken into account. For example, our students start school at the age of six and graduate from the 11th grade at around 17. After four years of study, they are adults aged 20 or 21. I believe it is also important for them to enter the labor market at the age of 19 or 20. There are fields, such as tourism management, that could perhaps be completed in three years. In my view, specialists and experts in the relevant fields should determine this. The formation of a profession’s requirements should not be based on the opinion of an official or politician, but on the views of specialists working in that labor market.”
The minister added that three years might not be enough to train specialists in some fields: “For example, I believe that this period is genuinely too short for training engineers. Medical education, for instance, takes six years, while teacher training takes four years. When we joined the Bologna Process, we tried to fit all specialties into a single framework. This is appropriate for some fields. For example, veterinary medicine currently takes five years. Some specialties take four years and others five. Learning some professions requires six years, while four years is enough for others. It depends on the complexity of the profession. These issues should be discussed, and in addition to the Education Institute and the Ministry of Education as regulatory bodies, the discussions should mainly involve specialists in the relevant fields. They should say, for example, that three years is not enough to train a civil engineer and that it should take four or five years. A tourism specialist, by contrast, could be trained in three years.
“We also need to review the convention documents to which we are party. For example, the Bologna Convention refers to 180 to 240 credits, corresponding to three or four years. However, as I said, no transition to 12-year education is currently planned. Naturally, there are places where a 12-plus-three model operates to some extent. At present, we are speaking about an 11-plus-four model. But if specialists and employers in a particular field believe that some four-year specialties can be completed in three years, I think this may be possible in certain areas. This would provide a good opportunity to enter the labor market sooner. However, transferring all specialties to three-year programs is probably not under consideration.”
Qafqazinfo
Azerbaijan currently follows an 11-year general education model, while bachelor’s programs generally last four years. Under the Bologna framework, higher education programs are commonly measured through the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System, with bachelor’s degrees typically requiring 180 to 240 credits.
