May 2007 - A few years ago, ten-year-olds Mastona, Gulnora, and Zamira were reluctant to go to school in Vahdat, Tajikistan. Their school was literally crumbling, with a shortage of furniture and a roof that was ready to cave in. Now, their school is sturdy, clean, and replete with new equipment—even some computers.

“School is much more fun now,” says Zamira.

Until recently, Tajikistan’s education system had been on the decline since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the 1990s civil war. The country went from near-universal literacy to increased drop-out rates, schools in disrepair, and textbooks in short supply. The national education system needed to be revamped, but money and capacity simply were not available.

With the World Bank’s support, Tajikistan initiated the Education Modernization project in 2003, with the overall goal of improving access to quality education and raising student achievement levels. The Project builds on an earlier education pilot project to rehabilitate schools, train teachers, and strengthen capacity in the Ministry and District Education Offices.

The Project aims to increase community involvement in education through Parent-Teacher Associations. PTAs can apply for grant funding from the Ministry of Education, and they are responsible for raising and contributing a small percentage of the grant. Grants can be used for school rehabilitation, or more targeted grants can address specific quality problems, such as the lack of a usable latrine on school property or encouraging girls to stay in school. Twenty PTAs were created initially and are now being expanded to 454 additional schools in seven districts.

“Our PTA meets monthly so that everyone stays informed,” says Nazar Sufiev, the head of the PTA at School #136 in Vahdat. “The PTA contributed to the school’s full-scale rehabilitation by raising money and using our labor to replace the windows. When students are absent, we work with the families individually to encourage them to send their children to school.”

Tajikistan faces a number of challenges in educating its children, including a growing youth population that is predominantly rural. Young girls often miss out on schooling because their families are forced to make difficult choices due to rising education costs.

Some schools are addressing low female attendance by encouraging their interest in activities beyond the traditional curriculum. School #29 in Dushanbe received a grant to purchase more modern sewing equipment for a home economics class. Seventh graders learn national embroidery, as well as folk patterns that they sew onto pillowcases and duvets. Meanwhile, the boys have a complementary carpentry class where they will soon start using shiny new tools bought with grant money to build anything from rolling pins to furniture. Since the purchase of the new equipment, the students show more interest in the class and are less likely to skip.

School #29 will also kick-start a nutrition program using new kitchen equipment, which elsewhere has improved student performance by increasing their ability to focus. In other parts of the country, music programs engage students in after-school activities and thus keep them motivated to attend school.

In addition to sound infrastructure, students must have access to a sufficient supply of modern, high-quality textbooks. At Dushanbe’s School #55, school officials proudly present 2300 newly-acquired Tajik-language literary works, compared to zero Tajik books previously. The books, in addition to their new shelves, were purchased with a grant.

“We have 900 members of the library, both students and locals, even city officials,” beams the principal, Tagoi Khomidov. “The quality of our education is increasing; we had 28 students place at the local academic Olympiad event.”

So far, 23 new textbook titles have been published and over 2.6 million distributed. Currently, the primary school curriculum is being revised to focus on learning outcomes and skills for the new economy, rather than factual, content-based learning. The new curriculum will cover math, arts, music, and the Tajik language, and will be accompanied by teaching guides and new textbooks.

While there are still not enough textbooks for every student to have one, an innovative textbook rental system requires students to pay one-third of the cost, but then allows them to keep the book for an entire year. In this way, the textbooks are paid for in three years’ time. At School #55, students and parents pay for the textbooks through special bank accounts set up for the purpose.

Although piecemeal solutions such as textbook rentals and rehabilitation can fix specific problems, schools also needed to have more transparent funding and cost-effective budgeting to channel education dollars to best benefit students. One new solution is per capita financing. Each school is responsible for drawing up a budget based on the number of students and the type of school, and they receive funds from the District Education Offices. Funding must also be defined for salaries and maintenance. Schools are now saving money and are more accountable for how that money is spent.

A critical question is whether these upgrades and changes are sustainable, as adequate funding continues to be a problem, and students require more modern and expensive equipment in order to compete in the labor market. One key to sustainability is community participation, engendered by the PTAs, which ensures that parents and others are involved in school management.

In addition to sustainability, other challenges remain. Rehabilitated schools often cannot be guaranteed heating due to poor local infrastructure, which greatly reduces the likelihood that students will attend school in the winter. Teachers’ salaries, although increasing, are still dismally low, and many teachers leave for Russia for better earnings. The World Bank, along with donors such as the Asian Development Bank, U.S. Agency for International Development, UNICEF, and the Education for All - Fast Track Initiative (FTI) are collaborating and scaling up efforts to address these obstacles.

The FTI’s Catalytic Fund, for instance, has provided grants to further develop the education sector and for capacity building for the Ministry of Education. ADB, USAID, and GTZ are focusing on teacher training and the creation of an education management information system to improve the data available on education outcomes.

Ultimately, providing quality education for Tajikistan’s youth will likely depend on continued cooperation at all levels between government, community members, school authorities, and civil society. Innovation is also key—Tatiana Prokhorova, the principal of School #1 in Rudaki, turned a grant to open a school supplies store into profit-generating ideas such as a greenhouse, dairy, and vegetable garden. The profits and bartering pay-offs from these experiments keep her boarding school afloat.

“Over the years, more and more of our students are going on to secondary school and university,” Tatiana says proudly. “We keep track of where are students attend school and work—a graduate recently donated blankets and pillows for the dormitories.
We have little money, but we make the most of it.”

Click here for all project documents on the Education Modernization and Education Reform projects.

Education in Tajikistan At-A-Glance: