ONE YEAR MORE OR ONE YEAR TOO MANY?

The Ministry of Education has an ambitious new scheme to transfer to a 12-year model of education. For many parents this is a rabbit in a conjurer's hat where all you can see are the ears. Let's take a closer look.

According to convention

A specific international standard for general secondary education for a 12-year school has been in existence worldwide for some time. This term of education in the secondary school has been adopted in countries like the USA, Canada, Japan, Sweden and France. In Germany, the Czech Republic, Italy and Switzerland it is 13 years, and in the Netherlands 14 years.

Some countries of the CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States] are gradually moving over to the 12-year model following the Lisbon convention "On the Recognition of Qualifications Concerning Higher Education in the European Region". This is in reference to Kazakhstan and Russia. In Moldova, the Baltic countries, Uzbekistan and Georgia this stage has already been passed. Azerbaijan has also signed up to this convention.

It is hard to say today how this would look in a perfect world because the results of any undertakings in this sphere which, without exaggeration, could be described as ground-breaking in any society will only become known in a few years' time. Besides, by all accounts, few teachers and educational officials have any real idea of a 12-year education model. Many learned scholars see the transition to a 12-year model as an opportunity to change both the stereotypes of school structure and the structure itself. Some countries have their own models of educational structure. In Russia, for example, the formula 1-4 (infant school), 5-10 (primary school) and 11-12 (senior school) will operate. But more often than not we have become used to following existing examples in everything. In any event, today the Azerbaijani 12-year system is very abstract and approximate. It should be pointed out that this is no easy task, because the transition to a 12-year education system should not turn into an automatic addition to existing academic plans. It requires the upgrading of the whole education system and bringing it into line with age-related characteristics.

Moods in society

News about the transition to the 12-year model caused an acutely negative reaction among people. Most parents are angry. "This is one year too many. Bearing in mind that in the senior school children either don't go to school or go just to put in an appearance, and the teachers are no longer bothered…" "This is an extensive approach. Instead of improving the quality of education in the framework of the 10-year model, they want to increase this period of time, but the way things are at the moment nothing good will come of it. Even if they make it 25 years, unless there is an optimum education system, nothing will come of it. On the contrary, they are taking away years out of a child's life, years which he could spend on education the way he needs it." A great many people are making comparisons with the old Soviet system of education, in which with an eight-year education system the training was well-grounded, "not like it is now".

Of course, the bulk of the population are unfamiliar either with the progress of the reforms or their expedience, and that is why there is all this dissatisfaction. But this example, too, is indicative, in the sense that all the best intentions of the Education Ministry are still not being accepted by the people, and not just the pupils and their parents, but often the teachers, too. This is, of course, an important point, because any reaction by society - feedback, if you like - is a reaction that can help assess the work of any official organization: in this case - the education system, that very sensitive area in which the slightest changes can evoke a broad republic response.

"Zero" education

R+ was told at the Ministry of Education that the transition to a 12-year education system is, essentially, a locking-on to foreign standards. The current debate is: where precisely will this "extra" year be added - to the start of education or to the end? "Originally, the idea was to introduce it as a reception class, as pre-school education," the department said. Indeed, the situation with our pre-school education is quite complex. According to the ministry's statistics, this covers only 30 per cent of children, while it is planned to bring this number up to at least 70 per cent. The main role here is being carried out by play schools, but not all parents send their children there. In fact, the children who don't even go to play school mostly take compulsory pre-school educational courses. However, the expert from the ministry did not take on the responsibility of assessing the quality of these courses. "However, any play school, whether it is state-run or private, works according to a single tutorial plan and programme prepared by the ministry," the expert said.

Although failure to attend play schools is frequently defined by the stereotype of mothers (children are often sick at play school, and so on), the situation in pre-school and school education today is the complex result of the social and economic processes that have existed in society in recent decades. "In the difficult 1990s, a time of economic collapse, the birth rate was at a fairly low level, and that's natural," our expert said, "as a consequence of which many play schools closed down and there was a shortage of schools. Later, in the 2000s, as prosperity improved, society was gripped by a so-called baby boom. Two and even three children in a family came to be regarded as the norm. Such a somewhat trivial fact has a knock-on effect, especially in the sphere of education. And so, this led to an acute shortage of places in play schools and schools. Besides this, one should not forget about the problems in the educational sphere that already existed. So, the number of children in schools began to exceed the norms. Now, it is normal to hear about classes with 30-40 children. With the adoption of the concept of the curriculum, which led to a kind of revolution in educational establishments, where an individual approach to each child depending on their abilities is regarded as one of the priority areas, the teaching of the three Rs to each child in the first class becomes a Herculean task for teachers. They don't have the time. Therefore, pre-school education, in which the basics of knowledge are taught to a fairly restricted group of children, is a real "helping hand" for teachers of infant schools," the ministry believes.

Differentiation

While on the subject of a restricted group, it is not just the parents of children who, like it or not, find themselves drawn into the process of educating their offspring, but the teachers themselves who are responding negatively to the curriculum system. "This is an unworkable system. With classes of this size it is impossible to organize working groups and approach each child in an individual and creative way. Some assimilate knowledge quicker, others more slowly. The curriculum would have been a good method in small classes of 20, but never with 40 and often 50," the ministry says. That is why they think that introducing a 12-year education system will help break down the classes and introduce a limited choice of subjects.

As far as entry examinations for pre-school children are concerned, even in Soviet times, although the stereotype that no-one should be examined on entering a school has been preserved even today, a short, superficial interview is still conducted with the child. On the results of this interview, depending on their capabilities, the children are divided into classes: Class A was regarded as more "prestigious" than B, and so on. Having a uniform group should have helped the teacher to build his process of teaching in the most appropriate way. Today, the expert says, entrance examinations to a school are designed to do the same thing - shape classes according to the abilities and aptitudes of children towards different subjects.

Lightening the load of the colleges

So, we are moving seamlessly towards introducing an extra year of education in our schools. Evidently, a decision to introduce it will be taken not at the start, but at the end, i.e. to add a class after the 11th. According to a ministry expert, this will be a part of the creation of specialized classes: "After the 9th class the child will choose either to continue his education at the school or to leave and go to technical school. This is along the lines of the subject of restoring vocational-technical training. If the vocational-technical training base is good enough, then a child may leave the ninth class without doing himself any particular harm in order to get a profession. There are very few opportunities today to learn to be a mechanic or, say, an engineer. Moreover, this will also "ease the burden" of high competition when entering an academic institution. For this reason, the subsequent three classes after the ninth - 10th, 11th and 12th - are to be made more specialized (incidentally, since 2015, according to an educational Ministry project, there are already 50 schools with specialized classes). In other words, pupils, depending on their desire, as well as a future profession, will be able to choose their own classes with a fixed choice of subjects to focus on. Indirectly, this should spare them the need to hire tutors to prepare for college.

A single examination

The next logical outcome of this programme could be the introduction of a single examination based on the example of Russia. In it a pupil who has finished his 12 classes will sit a secondary school diploma examination at school, and the results of this examination will enable him to enter his chosen college. This means he will be able to choose the appropriate academic institution and enter it, still on the basis of a competition.

In previous articles on education R+ recalled the overcrowded nature of the curriculum, as a result of which it has been customary to extend the academic year in accordance with both the programme and with world standards. Some teachers believe this will enable the curriculum to be distributed more smoothly, to make it less wieldy and more digestible. In addition, if we are again to fall back on foreign standards, school leavers entering European colleges after the 11th class have had to spend a year on Foundation. Moreover, some teachers believe, it is wrong to think that at 16 years of age a child is ready for education in a higher academic institution.

In the opinion of the teacher and historian Vagif Abbasov, the transition to this system had been prepared some time ago, but the burden on pupils just continues to grow: "I think the burden from 1st to 9th class will be just as heavy, whereas the 10th, 11th and additional 12th classes will be more optional. There will certainly be a more rigorous recruitment and selection process of students for the senior classes."

Generally speaking, many people believe that the decision to increase the academic years is not approaching the subject from the wrong end. So long as the vast majority are unhappy about the quality of education and tuition and the lack of uniform textbooks, the curriculum system is not completely "worn out" and chaotic, despite the fact that it has been around for a long time. Incidentally, the introduction of this system in Ukraine was a failure and it was abandoned after a few years, returning to the 11-year education standard.