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Sabina Mammadli

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Heydar Aliyev, the National leader of the Azerbaijani people and the founder of independent Azerbaijan, left an unprecedented mark on the lives of the whole nation. A natural-born leader, Heydar Aliyev was a great diplomat, who influenced significant growth not only in politics but also in the socio-economic and cultural aspects of the country.

Aware of the role the high level of socio-economic progress and scientific potential has on the integration of a country into the world community, the great leader paid particular attention to the developments of these spheres and laid the foundation for Azerbaijan’s success in the international arena.

It does not come as a surprise that the year 1969, when Heydar Aliyev came to power is seen as a turning point in Azerbaijani history. Azerbaijani national leader's great contribution to science, education and culture saw fruitful results in the start of a renaissance of Azerbaijani society.

Prior to this period, Azerbaijan was mostly known as an agrarian republic, famous for only its own, but the new epoch archived by the restless efforts of Heydar Aliyev has embarked the country on a path of rapid development.

Under the leadership of the national leader, Azerbaijan carried out reforms at various levels of education: such as the transition to general secondary education in 1970 and the consequent building of 849 secondary schools with more than 350,000 places in those years.

Since 1978, schoolchildren were provided with free textbooks. In the 70s and 80s, five new universities were opened in the country. In those years, the number of people receiving higher education in the country increased from 70,000 to 100,000.

From ruins to modern schools

The education system in the country faced a major decline as a result of Armenia’s military aggression in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Some 242 kindergartens, 616 general education schools, 11 technical schools, 1 university, 2 university branches, and 3 secondary special schools were destroyed.

In this vein, the return to power of Heydar Aliyev in June 1993 at the insistence of the nation played an irreplaceable role in the reviving of social life of the country. Once back in power, Heydar Aliyev implemented the 11-year education system and developed the concept and strategy of education construction covering 3 stages.

Heydar Aliyev’s policy was always based on the principles of national ideology and independence. In this regard, he paid particular attention to the issue of developing new textbooks for secondary schools, realizing the importance of textbooks on the Azerbaijani language, literature and history in the education system.

Throughout the years in power, Heydar Aliyev nationalized the staff of the Azerbaijani education sphere with local cadres, built schools all over the republic, particularly in the villages, displayed care for teachers, provided the teachers working in villages with accommodation, rent, allowance and other privileges. Besides, the youth were provided with conditions to receive higher education, the number of higher education institutions was increased and efforts were made to link Azerbaijani education with the education system of advanced countries.

Special care was paid to Baku State University by Heydar Aliyev, as he created conditions to increase the balance of girls, as well as increase the number of scientists and expansion of scientific research.

With the care and attention of the national leader, 479 men graduated from the Azerbaijan State University in 1939-41; when in 1920, only 259 out of the 1412 alumnus were Azerbaijani.

“The biggest achievement in Azerbaijan is that we have no uneducated man. One cannot find an uneducated man in any village, or a distant mountain village of our country,” the great leader once said, which demonstrates his utmost dedication to the social progress and educated future generation of Azerbaijan.

Heydar Aliyev’s eternal heritage embracing all the different spheres of national development gave impetus to further growth and stood as the foundation for Azerbaijan we see today, which has a strong national identity and is known in the world arena too.

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Sabina Mammadli is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @SabinaMmdl

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