Rethinking Schooling for the 21st Century

Education Initiative with the intention of aligning the system more closely with
international standards. New curricula were piloted in English, mathematics and
science in selected laboratory schools. The project aimed to review and update the
National Curriculum and Assessment Framework, supporting the implementation
of a 12-grade curriculum and a national testing system. Once again, following
parliamentary elections, the MECS launched a new comprehensive education
sector quality reform program in 2012 to ‘upgrade the curricula and teaching
approaches to international standards and better meet the needs of a diverse
range of student needs’ (Mongolia, 2015). The new core curriculum focuses on
skills or competencies to be acquired by students at various stages of schooling
from pre-primary to senior secondary, through studying an integrated subject
curriculum. The competency-based approach permeates the policy framework
for 2012–2016, encompassing reforms to the national curriculum, recommended
teaching and assessment methods, textbook and teaching-learning resources
and the system for teachers’ professional development (Sarvi, Munger and Pillay,
2015).
By contrast, in Uzbekistan, the government for many years largely eschewed
curricular reform, instead devoting more resources to building and renovating
schools across the country, while boosting student subsidies and teachers’
salaries — with the express intention of improving equal access to education
through enhancing the ‘material-technical base’ (UNICEF, 2010). The SES
introduced in 1999 defined compulsory content or minimum standards for each
educational level, along with optional components dependent on students’
particular needs and capacities, the availability of facilities, staffing and the
developmental requirements of the local area (UNDP, 2008). This ‘old SES’
remained highly prescriptive, underscoring the importance of theoretical
knowledge and rote learning, and was seen as at odds with approaches for
developing and assessing learners’ competencies and life-skills (Centre for
Economic Research, 2010). Preparatory studies began in 2005 with a view to
developing a new SES to meet changing societal ‘needs’. A lead government
policy research institute in Uzbekistan concluded that improving educational
quality required an urgent transition to a new approach focused on developing
knowledge, abilities and competencies (Centre for Economic Research, 2009).
The new SES was adopted in 2010 (Uzbekistan, 2010), but in the event it did not
represent a substantial break with its predecessor (Nasirov, 2017).
In 2012, Uzbekistan adopted a National Education Sector Plan 2012–2017. This
called for improvements to schooling in order to better equip learners with
skills of independent thinking and organisation. The Plan aimed to prepare
students for successful progression into vocational education, bestowing
competencies that would enable them to contribute to society. The government
pointed to complaints from parents and other stakeholders regarding the
inadequacy of the existing SES and the country’s schools and teachers to meet
‘modern requirements’ (Usmanova, 2017). Global and regional trends towards
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Chapter 6: Central Asia and Mongolia