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The National Assembly started the work of regular sittings on May 2. The Parliament approved the agenda of regular sittings. Some drafts will be debated in a special procedure. Their second reading debate will be carried out within twenty-four hours after adopting them in the first reading.

The draft law on Making Addenda and Amendments to the Law on Scientific and Scientific-Technical Activities was debated with the related legislative package in the first reading.

According to the Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sport Zhanna Andreasyan, the legislative initiative is aimed at reforming the spheres of higher education and science and aims to solve a number of problems. The first is complying the statistics conducted in the field of science and the implemented policy with international standards. A number of notions are defined for this purpose.

It is designed to form a Higher Education and Science Committee on the basis of the Higher Qualification Committee, the Science Committee and the Higher and Post-Graduate Professional Department of the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports. “We often talk about the fact that higher education cannot exist without science, and science, in turn, must necessarily be coordinated and have connections with educational programmes,” the Minister said and added that the existence of the Committee will enable the development and implementation of a unified policy to become a reality. The Committee will work under the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports.

Zhanna Andreasyan also stated that the package includes two provisions that refer to the reform of the activity of the RA National Academy of Sciences.

The NA deputy of the Civil Contract Faction Mariam Poghosyan inquired whether the employees of the Higher Qualification Committee and the Science Committee will continue to work in the structure after the reorganization of the Committee. The Minister informed that after the adoption of the package, the Charter of the Committee will be developed and approved by the Government, then the process of approval of the staff list and other details will be implemented.

According to Zhanna Andreasyan, the professionalism and experience of the employees will be taken into consideration. There is also a defined legal process for how this is done. “I should make it clear that the Higher Education and Science Committee will not mechanically take over and unite these departments. We are talking about new type of functions: programme development and coordination, policy implementation. Naturally, we will look very carefully at the capabilities of each employee,” the Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sport explained.

The NA Head Committee endorsed the package, it was presented by Taguhi Ghazaryan.