Recent trends in distance education in Tajikistan

• In Event: Highlighted Session: Educating for inclusion beyond the pandemic: Digitalization, distance education and the teaching profession in Central Asia

Proposal

While distance education has the potential to be an effective way to provide continuity of education during disruptions, more attention needs to be paid to accessibility, quality, and equity issues, which are currently under-addressed. This paper studies the experiences of Tajikistan in using distance education to understand what works, and help to identify future prospects in this arena.

The study included desk reviews to identify effective distance education models and strategies to reduce inequality and improve quality. Undertaken within the context of the larger international research project ‘Distance education to improve quality and access in Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia and Tajikistan’, this research also included a survey, interviews, focus group discussions, and observations with key education stakeholders to determine the effectiveness and scalability of selected distance education interventions.

With an estimated 10 million people, Tajikistan has a very young population. About 40% of the population are adolescents and youth, while 70% of the population are under the age of 35. Most of the country’s population (70%) live in rural areas. Young people and adolescents, especially adolescent girls, have limited opportunities to gain education and have higher dropout rates from school. Other studies have suggested that this is associated with early marriage, for which Tajikistan has the highest rate in the Eastern Europe and Central Asia region.

The field research showed that despite the determination and readiness of the Ministry of Education and Science in implementing distance education, in practice there are serious barriers to the widespread implementation and equal access to distance education in the country. In addition to the degree of access to technology, which is highly differentiated across regions and in the context of urban/rural areas, there are also barriers such as IT literacy among both parents and teachers and the inaccessibility of Internet services to low-income families. Existing solutions are local in nature and have not yet shown their effectiveness.
Distance education has taken place only in some private schools. Very few children with disabilities have been able to enjoy access to distance education, all as part of projects supported by international organizations. Schools are supplied with computers and other equipment for digital education even in remote areas, yet they are poorly maintained and not all equipment is used. Another important finding is that poverty is not the only factor impeding students’ access to technology at home, but also who makes decisions in the family is decisive. Sometimes, for example, young parents cannot purchase a computer or other devices for a child because money and decisions are made by seniors (grandparents) at home.

These and other findings will be presented during the conference in order to deepen our understanding of disparities in educational attainment between rural and urban children, girls’ education after basic education, and the accessibility of schools to children with disability. The research will be accompanied by specific recommendations to show models or pilots that can be then further replicated to improve the quality and accessibility of distance education in Tajikistan.

Author

• Abduvohid Safarov, Anahita