Tajiks Approve Costly School Reforms
Parliament has changed the law to make it mandatory for children to spend ten years at school instead of nine, the current minimum.
Tajiks Approve Costly School Reforms
Parliament has changed the law to make it mandatory for children to spend ten years at school instead of nine, the current minimum.
As Azam Nasretdinov reports, the law also sets 12 years as the desirable level of education, enabling school-leavers to go on to higher education.
Those who object to the plan say it is too soon for cash-strapped Tajikistan to be making this change, however desirable the aim of raising standards might be.
Andrei Ilyin, a Dushanbe resident who has a child at school, is among those who are uncertain about the changes, and expresses typical concerns.
“Tajikistan isn’t ready for 12 year education,” he said. “First the schools don’t have enough teachers – they have one person teaching several subjects. Second, before we introduce 12-year schooling, we need to retrain teachers so they can give children the required level of knowledge. And the third issue is financial. Who’s going to pay for the retraining of teachers? New textbooks are needed. That’s a whole lot of money.”
The audio programme, in Russian and Tajik, went out on national radio stations in Tajikistan, as part of IWPR project work funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
