Role of Education in Development Aware of the key role education plays in a country's socioeconomic development, Azerbaijan's government was actively collaborating with many international organizations and donors by the late 1990s to improve the country's education system and training institutions in order to develop the human resources necessary for the country's economic and social development. Unfortunately, problems of poverty and population displacements during the 1990s further exacerbated existing disparities in school attendance across the country.
For 6- to 16-year-olds from very poor households in 1999, for example, 97 percent of those living in Baku and Absheron were attending school but only 75 percent of children from very poor families in the near southwest were enrolled in school.
