A school is a business estate of directors

The completion of the next academic year in Azerbaijan coincided with the discussion of amendments to the law "On Education" in the parliament, providing for the opening of paid preparatory courses for those wishing to enter the higher schools for training at the bachelor's level. In the first reading, a new version of the document was adopted.

In the course of the debate, Oqtay Asadov, the speaker of the Milli Mejlis voiced such a figure: about 50% of graduates of this year could not pass the first round of entrance exams to universities and colleges. This information aroused bewilderment and reasonable questions in society about the quality of secondary education, the effectiveness of measures taken to reform this field.

We talked with the chairman of the Republican Council of Education, Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences Azhdar Agayev about the real situation in the domestic schools, the reasons for the scale of tutoring, the tactics of modernization of the school education system.

-Azhdar muallim, today only lazy people do not talk about the reform of the secondary school, about the problems of education ...

- Unfortunately, many people do not have a clear understanding of what is happening in education. We are trying to solve the problems of education within the education itself. But whatever we do inside the school, it cannot improve by itself. And the experience of other countries that have passed the modernization stage shows that modernization should start not in school, it should start at the teacher training college. And for this it is necessary to return and begin to prepare future university teachers in school. And then we fall into that vicious circle in which all the participants of this process revolve.

I say this to the fact that the reform of the education system had to start not with the repair of schools and the writing of textbooks, although this is also important, but with the training of teachers of a new formation capable of realizing the tasks of reform. But the strategists from the Ministry of Education considered that the beautiful interior of the school, new furniture is reform, and the professionalism of teachers is a secondary one.

- How do you assess a diagnostic assessment of school teachers by the Ministry of Education?

- This test of knowledge and professional qualities of teachers is important. But further steps should motivate the participants of the process to raise their level, realize the potential, apply modern teaching methods. This does not happen. Why? Because not all teachers manage to get an 18 hour training load in order to qualify for an increased salary. As a result, the training hours remain the same as the low salary. In addition, teachers who showed low scores in the diagnosis, continue to teach.

By and large, this ministry project did not affect the quality of children's education in schools. Lessons are held formally, children are not engaged, so the scale of tutoring is so impressive in the country.

-You have mentioned an important point: as studies have shown, today students almost from the fifth class are engaged in addition with tutors. Is it so?

- There are plenty of such facts. You do not even need to conduct a survey among students, check in the social network, read what parents write there, and see for yourself. Moreover, some of the graduate students do not attend classes at all, and study with tutors. Thus, the school loses the main function: to give children knowledge, and to teach them to use the knowledge in practice.

Reforms should not only concern the material and technical base of schools and the number of computers in the classrooms. It is impossible to implement changes and achieve a new quality, without changing anything in essence. This concerns the content of programs, textbooks, and no less important - the transition to profile training. It's no secret that in high school students are engaged with tutors in certain disciplines, depending on the chosen specialty. So, is not it better to create specialized classes or profile lyceums, to give a decent salary to the same teachers?

Such changes would have a number of positive consequences. In addition to the already mentioned - ensuring the education of children in accordance with their abilities and desires - they would lead to a significant improvement in the quality of education. In specialized educational institutions, the most prepared subject teachers would try to work, which would create objective prerequisites for more successful teaching of children.

- Are the problems of our schools only unprofessionalism of teachers?

-Of course not. A key role plays the school directors, many of whom do not reach the modern level of a manager. Despite the fact that teachers are recruited on a competitive basis, through testing conducted by the Ministry of Education, many facts are known when people are recruited to bypass the procedures for ministerial selection. In the course of inspections, it will be found out that the teacher does not have a proper education or he has a fake diploma of a higher education institution.

School principals hide from the ministry vacancies, the distribution of training load between teachers. When such facts are revealed, the principal stands aside, and the teachers are forced to take the exam.

Informal collections of money and bribery is directly connected with the school principals. They look at the school as a business patrimony, where they can make a profit: collecting money from parents and the teachers themselves for any reason, despite the fact that the budget allocates funds for repairs, the purchase of equipment. One teacher recently called me and told me that they are collecting money for a gift to the school director. I advised her to inform the prosecutor's office and the Ministry of Education about this. In response, she told me that she was afraid of losing her job, so she did not want to go to these authorities and call her name. This is the situation in the country's schools.

- What and how to change in the current school?

- First and foremost, it is necessary to ensure the transition of secondary education to 12-year education for updating, bringing the contents of school subjects, preparing really modern textbooks, providing the teacher with the necessary methodological developments, in line with the modern development of science.

Unfortunately, our school programs are overloaded with auxiliary material, and pupils very often are oriented to remember this auxiliary material.

It is also necessary to introduce a specialized high school. While our high school is poorly differentiated on initial, base and senior. But it is well known that education and upbringing in each of them must differ substantially, taking into account the age of the child. When a child spends eleven years in the same room and team, he gets used to the invariance of the conditions. In adult life, a person's environment changes all the time - and each time you need to be confirmed in the team again and again.