Central Asian project on distance education: Meeting with the Advisory Council

30 July 2021
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A consortium of three organizations led by Taalim-Forum Public Foundation, has started the realization of a new project called “Promotion of Innovative Distance Education Approaches to Reduce Inequalities and Improve Access to Quality Education in Schools”. This project was recently funded by the Global Partnership for Education Knowledge and Innovation Exchange. 

The project is dedicated to study and analyze the experiences of Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, and Tajikistan in distance education to understand what works, and what needs to be improved. The study aims to identify effective distance education innovations and strategies to reduce inequality and improve quality. Successful distance learning interventions and opportunities will be reviewed for scaling.

On July 24-25, 2021, the first meeting of the project’s Advisory Council took place in Kyrgyzstan. The Vice President of the Kyrgyz Academy of Education Ulanbek Mambetakunov presented his analytical report on lessons learned from implementing distance education in Kyrgyzstan by the government during the quarantine in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The KIX EAP hub  Knowledge Lead, Julia Levin, spoke about knowledge sharing and innovation in education within the EAP hub and outlined possible areas for cooperation with Taalim-Forum. Moreover, participants discussed the first draft of the methodology and research instruments developed for upcoming field research. Other topics discussed during the meeting included distance learning technologies and resources, the role of teachers in digital education, and approaches and actions in education in response to the pandemic.

The meeting highlighted and proposed for discussion such issues as project scaling, the system of monitoring, evaluation, and learning. The project's next steps include conducting similar meetings with consultants of the project in Tajikistan and Mongolia. The project team will work on the consolidation of all the efforts to make the new project successful and valuable for educational systems in all project participant countries and other GPE partner countries.