The 11th republican Olympiad in Russian language and literature has opened in Azerbaijan.
The organizers of the Olympics are the Russian Embassy and the Rossotrudnichestvo Mission in Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan's Ministry of Education and the Association of Teachers of Russian-speaking Educational Facilities of the Republic.
Its first round was held at the Baku school No. 183 on January 19. Pupils in the 7th - 8th grades from 12 schools of Khazar district of Azerbaijan's capital took part in it. They were greeted by head of Rossotrudnichestvo's representative office in Azerbaijan Valentin Denisov, representative of the Azerbaijani Ministry of Education Ilgar Dadashev, inspector of the Baku Education Department Afgan Iskenderov, chairman of the Association of Teachers of Russian-speaking Educational Facilities of Azerbaijan Lyubov Yakunina, Rossotrudnichestvo's representative office in Azerbaijan reported.
The next two rounds will be held at the Baku schools No. 168 and No.114 on January 25-26. The Olympiad includes 24 rounds, the results will be summed up on June 6.
Azerbaijan's Deputy Minister of Education Firudin Gurbanov, speaking with the correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza earlier, said that education is an important area of Russian-Azerbaijani cooperation. "I would like to note that Azerbaijan attaches great importance to the teaching of the Russian language, more than 3 thousand schools study Russian as a foreign language, and more than 300 schools teach in Russian. The Russian language Olympiad is held annually, this year it was the tenth one, and it was attended by a record number of students from more than 600 schools," he said.
"An association of Russian and Azerbaijani universities was created in 2015, many projects are carried out on this platform. The branches of two Russian universities - Lomonosov Moscow State University and Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University operate successfully. The establishment of other branches is discussed. In addition, there is cooperation between secondary schools, we recently agreed on the exchange of schoolchildren and the holding of joint sports and intellectual competitions between Moscow and Baku schools," Firudin Gurbanov said.
