Education Ministry proposed to hold textbooks' monitoring in Azerbaijan

Baku. 20 November. REPORT.AZ/ "The State Students Admission Commission (SSAC) must not analyze the textbooks. The duty of the Commission is to monitor the process of admission to higher education, not to estimate the textbooks with special privilege. SSAC can only comment as the institution. The Evaluation Council of Textbooks under the Ministry of Education can share their objective opinion on textbooks," the chairman of Azerbaijan Education Council Ajdar Aghayev said it to Report.

He said that the standards of textbooks of educational institutions in Azerbaijan should be made on precise and national base at the level of universal values: "Illogicality, scientific weakness, violation of sequence cases are observed in current textbooks. It is due to the lack of theoretical pedagogy of persons who compile the textbooks. They have just a notion about the practice. For this reason, the person who prepares textbooks should have rich experience in this field. As we know, the tenders are announced on publication of textbooks. The winner of the tenders heads of publishing houses consider themselves as the author. For all reasons, the tenders must be amended."

The head of the press service of SSAC, Elnur Naghizada said to Report that SSAC was entrusted with the implementation of scientific-methodical monitoring on textbooks and other teaching materials used in education institutions, according to the President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev's decree dated April 19, 2012: "According to the decree, the special methodology and criteria on the implementation of scientific-methodical monitoring have been prepared and these documents have been approved by the Chairman of SSAC. Also, the experts with some experience in this field and who are not the authors of the materials were selected to discuss the textbooks."

The press service of the Ministry of Education told Report that according to the Presidential Decree dated 19 April, 2012 on changes to "the Regulations on the State Student Admission Commission of the Republic of Azerbaijan" approved by Azerbaijani President's Decree No.219 dated April 6, 2005, monitoring of secondary school textbooks includes the authority of the State Students Admission Commission".

According to the ministry, the final opinion of SSAC formed the basis of the results of the monitoring carried out by the comments and suggestions in final judgment formed as the result of the monitoring held by SSAC are taken into consideration in publication process of textbooks.

"The Evaluation Council of Textbooks under the Ministry of Education is engaged in evaluating manuscripts of textbooks produced in accordance with competitions," the ministry stated.