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The Azerbaijani Minister of Education stated the actual number of the first-graders in the country. They turned out to be less by 8% or nearly 12,000 than the number of the children born during the corresponding year indicated in the official statistics.

According to the Azerbaijani news agency "APA", the Education Minister Mikail Jabbarov in his speech made at the XIV Congress of teachers of the Republic stated that currently in 4513 educational institutions of Azerbaijan 1 million 188 students study and 151 thousand 538 teachers work.

According to Mikail Jabbarov in recent years, "the number of children attending the first class grows." Thus, the Azerbaijani Minister noted that 137 thousand children attended the first class in 2013/2014 academic year.

The children born in 2006 went to first class in 2013, while according to the State Statistics Committee of Azerbaijan, in 2006, there were born 148.9 thousand children in the Republic. Given that, according to the Minister of Education of Azerbaijan only 137 thousand children attended the first class, a natural question arises: where the 11,900 or 8% of children have gone which is the total number of births? Were they born in Azerbaijan, but left the country with their parents in the last 7 years? Don’t they go to school? Or maybe they have never existed, and those thousands of children appeared only on paper?

If we consider that a part of the first-graders was born in 2007, then the difference will be even more serious, because, according to the State Statistics Committee of Azerbaijan, in 2007 there were born 151,900 children in the republic.

Azerbaijani authorities seriously overstate the population of the country by falsifying a series of indicators. However, some data are periodically being published in Azerbaijan whcih contradict the official statistics of the "growth" of the population of the republic. Thus, in January 2013 the chairman of the Azerbaijani State Student Admission Commission Maleyka Abbaszade, at the presentation of the 12th issue of the journal “Abiturent”("Entrant"-Ed.), while summarizing the results of scientific and statistical analysis of the enrollment of students for the 2012-2013 academic year, stated that over the past eight years, the number of high school graduates in Azerbaijan had decreased by 33810 person or by 27.46%.

Earlier, in July 2012, scandal broke out in Azerbaijan in connection with a major falsification aimed at "increasing" the number of students. The scandal started after the statement of Maleyke Abbaszade, the Chairman of the State Commission for Students Admission, which stated that 90,000 students were to participate in the final exams of the 9th grade, but actually only 78,000 participated. Abbaszade noted that she knew nothing about the fate of 22 thousand students of IX and XI classes, who were to take part in the finals of 2012.

Commenting on the situation, expert Alovsat Osmanli noted that instead of 90,000 students 78,000 attended the final exams of the 9th grade. "Meanwhile, 8000 of 78,000 failed the exams. This means that only seventy thousand graduates were able to get the Certificate of General Education," said Alovsat Osmanli. As the expert said, according to the statistics, 11 years ago 133 thousand pupils entered the Azerbaijani schools. Of these 133 thousand students only 70,000 could get high school diploma.

Besides, the data of the State Statistics Committee of Azerbaijan concerning the number of persons over 18 have been seriously overstated in comparison with the data of the CEC of the republic. Thus, in November 2010, the head of the Azerbaijani Election Monitoring Center and democracy training Anar Mamedly turned to the head of the Central Election Commission of Azerbaijan with a request to clarify the situation, pointing out the difference in the figures of voters recorded in the data of the CEC and the State Statistics Committee of Azerbaijan. Thus, on the website of the CEC it is stated that there are 4,829,888 people registered on the list of the voters. The website of the State Statistics Committee of Azerbaijan stated that Azerbaijan's population over 18 (who has the right to vote) is about 6,438,000 people. The Azerbaijani state agencies could not explain difference of figures in 1.6 million people.

In June 2013 Akif Gurbanov, Azerbaijani CEC member, stated, "The report of State Statistics Committee of Azerbaijan indicates population of 9 million 356 thousand people. More than 6 million 467 thousand people are aged above 20. In the report of the CEC the figure of the voters has reached 4 million 986 thousand people. The difference in numbers makes one and a half million. Where are these voters?"

In July 2013 the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), expressed in its report concerns about the fact that according to the State Statistics Committee, the number of those who are over 20 exceeds the number of the voters with 1.5 million.

In previous articles on this topic we have already indicated that the population size of Azerbaijan is overstated by State Committee on Statistics of the Republic approximately with 37%. In reality, the calculations show that the population of Azerbaijan is overstated by State Statistical Committee of the Republic approximately with 3.5 million people and is unlikely to exceed 5.8 million.