On September 29, the opening ceremony of the international conference "Sustainable quality assurance in education" was held organized by the Agency for Quality Assurance in Education.

The main purpose of the conference is to study the advanced experience in the field of quality assurance in education, to improve internal and external quality assurance policies and mechanisms at the stages of secondary and higher education and to establish relations between these two levels of education in the field of quality assurance.

In her opening speech, the chairman of the Board of AQAE Ulkar Sattarova informed the event participants about the work by the Agency in the direction of quality assurance, the results obtained and future plans.

The Minister of Science and Education Mr. Emin Amrullayev one of the main speakers firstly noted in his speech that the reforms implemented in the framework of the Bologna process in the educational field of Azerbaijan contributed to the improvement of the quality of higher education. At the same time, the minister emphasized the importance of ensuring quality of educational levels in accordance with the European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (ESG) which is one of the upcoming goals.

We should note that the rector of Sumgayit State University professor Elkhan Huseynov and head of the department of Quality Assurance in Education, senior lecturer Narmin Hasanova participated in the international conference.

On the first day of the two-day conference, during the panel discussions in the field of quality assurance organization of internal and external quality assurance systems in European higher education were discussed in accordance with quality assurance standards and guidelines (ESG) in the European higher education sphere for ensuring continuity of quality assurance between general and higher education levels.The following persons participated in the discussion:

 Hendrik Martijnse, director of the department of Higher Education of the Education Inspectorate of the Kingdom of the Netherlands one of the leading international organizations in the field of quality assurance in Europe and the world, Achim Hopbach an international expert on higher education, the president of the European Association for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA) in 2009-2013, Olgun Çiçek the vice-president of the Central and Eastern European Network of Quality Assurance Agencies in Higher Education (CEENQA), Rufat Azizov the director of the Institute of Education, Elnur Aliyev the director of the department of Organization and Management of General and Preschool Education of the Ministry of Science and Education.

Also, the issues of cooperation in projects and experience exchange in the field of quality assurance in education were touched upon and the questions of the participants of the event were answered.