“According to the proposed amendment to the law “On General Education”, teachers' salaries will be determined based on working hours, not teaching hours.
Yesterday, during the discussion of the draft law “On the State Budget of the Republic of Azerbaijan for 2026” at a joint meeting of several parliamentary committees, Minister of Science and Education Emin Amrullayev also confirmed this.
"In the next phase of our certification approach (2027–2030), the main goal is to eliminate the practice of hourly, part-time, and occasional teaching in the teaching profession. Teachers' work needs to be established on a permanent and professional basis. Just as each of us has a 9:00–18:00 work schedule, a permanent work model should be created for teachers as well.
This model will be entirely voluntary. No one will be forced. A competitive, high-paying, full-time teacher model will be formed. The weekly teaching load for such a teacher will be 18–24 hours, and in the remaining hours, they will engage in other education-related activities – preparing materials, working with parents, establishing individual approaches with students, etc.
Only teachers who have achieved high results in certification will be selected for this position. Those who do not wish to can still operate under the hourly system remaining from the Soviet era – on a "stavka" basis.
However, we must understand that there is no alternative to this system, and the “stavka” system no longer justifies itself. This is a reform that must change and break free from 100 years of old practice," the minister noted.
The new change raises several questions: for example, how much will the salaries of teachers working 9 hours a day increase?
In a statement to Modern.az, former MP Sona Aliyeva stated that calculating teacher salaries based on working days is a normal education model worldwide.
“However, in all these countries, the working day is structured. It is precisely defined how many hours a teacher spends teaching, how many hours on preparation, and how many hours on individual work with students. In our country, for now, only the thesis “the teacher will be at school from 09:00-18:00” is being voiced. If this model is implemented without content, the result will not be quality, but simply a “mandatory workday” model.”
According to the former MP, international experience shows that if a teacher works 40 hours, only half of that is teaching:
“The remaining hours are for preparation, assessment, and teamwork on other school matters in quiet offices. However, in our country, there are hundreds of schools where teachers lack basic conditions such as a desk, computer, or a room for individual work. This means that simply increasing hours will not allow us to meet world standards. The second important point: a full working day is only effective if the teacher's salary genuinely increases. Because if working hours increase but salaries remain the same, this reform will create dissatisfaction, not motivation. One of the reasons for the decrease in interest in the teaching profession in international practice is precisely this discrepancy – workload increases, but value does not.”
Sona Aliyeva also emphasized that the third problem is the risk of teacher shortage:
“If a high score requirement is set for certification, then teacher training in universities must be strengthened. In our country, admission to pedagogical specialties is still carried out with low scores, and in the end, candidates for teaching cannot pass the MİQ exam. If requirements increase but support does not, hundreds of vacancies will remain unfilled in the future.”
Sona Aliyeva also stated that, technically, the salary model based on working hours is essentially correct:
“However, this will only be effective if the content of working hours is precisely defined, schools' material and technical base is ready for this model, paperwork is reduced, teachers are given real pedagogical time and independence, salary increases are declared in figures, not just words, and a professional development system is established instead of a regime of pressure and control.”
In our interviewee's opinion, otherwise, increasing working hours will not improve quality; on the contrary, private tutoring will become even stronger.
“At the same time, the teacher's workload will increase, and interest in the teaching profession will decrease. In short, we need a smartly designed teacher model, not just additional hours. If this reform is implemented thoughtfully, education will benefit. If it is applied hastily and mechanically, teachers and students will be the losers,” Sona Aliyeva emphasized.
