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Educational Policy in Comparative Perspective: The Case of Estonia and Azerbaijan
 
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Estonian educational policy from different standpoints
Education has been a focal need of the Baltic nations since recovering autonomy. As a little 
nation with constrained normal assets, Estonia sees its human capital as a critical resource for 
being the member of the European Union and to contend in the worldwide economy [12] 
highlighted several successful changes in Estonian education since independence as: Estonia 
built strong legal structure of education by adopting following acts in the field of pre-school 
education, basic and secondary education, vocational education, higher education, private 
education, adult education and so forth; formation and modernization of the curricular for basic 
and secondary schools; creation of the national assessment system in accordance with renovation 
of the national examination in order to improve quality of education and build accountability for 
all; establishment of accessibility of IT and computerization of schools; renovation of vocational 
schools on the basis of building strong links between skill development and knowledge 
attainment; reforms in higher education in terms of development research abilities and making 
them internationally competitive; together with progress on universities also Estonia tried to 
improve colleges due to demand of labour market; significant initiatives on presenting new 
projects on education such as Open Estonia Foundation, Educational Forum. These all successful 
attempts were due to real encouragement and will to change and innovation.
Adaptability and openness are the attributes and pervasive standards of Estonia's financial 
arrangement. Estonia is an e-nation with a positive business atmosphere and expense favourable 
circumstances that are additionally open to development. This success is done on the support 
and believe in human capital. Enhancing the country's state funded schools is one of the most 
astounding needs of Estonia's government, state, and nearby governments [10]. Among the goals 
picking up consideration as of late is the need to create school pioneers who are equipped for 
practicing more carefulness over guideline and building up an institutional society those 
backings compelling instructing practices. To catalyse changes in understudy realizing, 
numerous states have instituted new administration gauges for principals and changed criteria 
for pioneer preparing projects. Areas, as well, have started to pay more notice to their own 
human asset pipelines by setting up projects to prepare yearning principals and to build up the 
aptitudes of mid-profession principals [7]. 
The educational policy of Estonia since 1991 has built on liberal economic and political 
developments. The central issues in educational policy are privatization of schools and increase 
community responsibility for schools and create cost efficiency in education. The reforms were 
held by Initiatives and changes made during independence Learning Estonia, Tiger Leap 
Programme and Education Forum brought new approaches to the Estonian educational system. 
In 1999-2000 
Learning Estonia
educational strategy came into existence, prepared by the Ministry 
of Education of Estonia and Education Forum Task Force. The draft was discussed for two years 
and was adopted in 2001. In 2001 other documents such as development strategy Knowledge 
Based Estonia, the Action Plan for the Development of Vocational Education, the Higher 
Education Reform Strategy and National Development Strategy on Youth Work were developed 
by the government as well. As mentioned above Estonia came across with several challenges, 
they are followings: (1) change in old-dated and ideological curricular of the Soviet times; (2) 
integration modern teacher trainings; (3) existence of separate schools for Russian migrants or 
Russian speaking people in Estonia; (4) development and improvement of IT and (5) adaptation 
to the changes.

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