The 3rd Project Steering Committee Meeting of the Twinning project 'Support to Strengthening the higher education system in Azerbaijan' was held on 18 February in the premises of the Ministry of Education.

The meeting was attended by Project Leaders from three partner organizations representing Member States and also Beneficiary country, representatives of the Science, Higher and Secondary Professional Education Department of the Ministry of Education, project component leaders from the BC and other members of the Project Steering Committee.

Mr. Shahin Bayramov, BC Project Leader, Deputy Head of Science, Higher and Secondary Professional Education Department at the Ministry of Education, opened the meeting.

He provided a short overview of the main outcomes of the third quarter of the Twinning project. He also pointed out the main policy developments that happened over the last project quarter emphasizing the State Program on Increasing International Competitiveness of Higher Education for 2019-2023 approved by the presidential decree.  

Later Mr. Curvale, Senior Project Leader and Senior Program Coordinator at the International Center for Pedagogical Studies of France (CIEP) and Mr. Giedrius Viliūnas, Junior Project Leader and employee of the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports of Lithuania, also took the floor and commented on certain outcomes achieved over the last quarter.

“It is a great pleasure to be here again and to see what has been achieved so far,” MS Project Leader Mr. Curvale noted.

“So far the project activities were dealing with institutional aspect of higher education institutions. But from now on the project will interact with the normal daily work of professors. The project will come closer to the work of academics,” Mr. Curvale added.

In her turn, Resident Twinning Advisor of the project Ms. Lisa Bydanova presented the results of the third quarter of the project implementation as per component.

She elaborated on a new format of state programs in priority areas suggested by project experts under the Component I pointing out that the new format is able to give the higher education institutions more autonomy in terms of designing their own study programmes. 

“It needs to be further discussed by relevant stakeholders,” she added.

Ms. Bydanova also gave a short summary of the project activities planned to be implemented in the fourth quarter.

At the end the next Project Steering Committee Meeting was tentatively scheduled for late May 2019.