Last week was one of the busiest for the EHEA Twinning project. Ten Finnish and Estonian higher education experts came to Baku to have discussions with the academic and administration staff of Azerbaijan economic, pedagogical and technical universities on the outcomes of the quality evaluations, which the European and Azerbaijani experts had together carried out in April. EHEA Twinning project has shown that the criteria and methods of European quality evaluation can be applied in quality assurance of Azerbaijan universities. That is the major outcome of the project.
European and Azerbaijani experts drafted the ‘Azerbaijani Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance ‘, an Azerbaijani version of the EHEA standards, to be used in pilot evaluations. We trained Azerbaijani experts to make quality evaluations using EHEA standards, and the pilot universities’ staff to make self-evaluations. Thereafter, evaluation visits to pilot universities were successfully implemented. All evaluation groups worked professionally and all pilot universities were well prepared. Azerbaijan members of the evaluation groups – including student members – proved as competent as their European colleagues.
On 20th of June, the Twinning project, the Ministry of Education and ANO will hold a conference with the participation of all Azerbaijani universities in order to disseminate the main outcomes of the EHEA Twinning project. We have already published the pilot evaluation reports in our homepage, in Azerbaijani and in English. Please, take a look at http://ehea.edu.az/.
Most importantly, Azerbaijan is committed to the reforms at the highest political level. The order №2199 of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, approved on 2 June 2017, stipulates, among others, that ‘developing standards and guidelines for quality assurance in Azerbaijani higher education system [will take place] in line with the relevant European Standards and Guidelines within the TWINNING programme of the European Union’. This is a high-level public recognition of our project. I feel happy and proud!
