Azerbaijan, Baku, Nov. 5 /Trend A.Akhundov/
Further cooperation between the World Bank (WB) and the Government of Azerbaijan in the field of education will be coordinated with the country's upcoming national education strategy, WB Acting Country Manager for Azerbaijan Saida Bagirli, told Trend on Monday.
"We are waiting for the strategy in the field of education to find some concrete form, and any further intervention would be correct to do in accordance with this strategy, including a possible project in the field of higher education," Bagirli said.
She noted that the WB experts participate in the consultations in a framework of the preparation of the strategy.
"We looked at the initial documents, but have not yet seen the final version. The Bank helped to organize a familiarization tour of the representatives of Azerbaijan to Singapore in order to study their system," Bagirli said.
Currently, second WB project for the development of education in Azerbaijan is being carried out, in the frame of which the system of strategic planning in the Ministry of Education and its departments was created.
The introduction of effective methodologies in the school education, including improvement of the collections of libraries in the 11 pilot schools, has started. Offices of the Ministry of Education are instructed on similar measures in other libraries in 500 schools covered by the project.
In addition, 18,195 primary school teachers received training in the frame of the project.
The cost of this project, approved in April 2008, is 45.4 million, of which the share of the WB loan accounts for $25 million.
As of October 2012, $11.6 million out of the funds provided by the World Bank were used. Project completion is scheduled for March 31, 2014.