The Uzbekistan Education for Excellence Program is a 4-year program (December 9, 2019–December 8, 2023) funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented by the RTI International Consortium in collaboration with the Uzbekistan Ministry of Public Education. The Program conducted baseline Early Grade Reading and Mathematics Assessments (EGRA and EGMA, respectively) in November and December 2021. The purpose of the baseline was to measure the pre-intervention levels of mathematics and Uzbek language reading achievement for students at the end of grade 2 and grade 4.

Teacher StandardsCurriculum Product Brief

Teacher Guide-Curriculum Product Brief

Student Textbook-Curriculum Product Brief

Student Learning Standards Curriculum Product Brief

Scope and Sequence Curriculum Product Brief

This guide is designed to provide teachers and parents with strategies to strengthen their teaching of children’s literature. By incorporating children’s books into your teaching and interaction with learners, you can engage them, foster a love for reading, and promote critical thinking and literacy skills. In this guide, you will find a variety of strategies and ideas to support your teaching of children’s literature and reading to children, including social and emotional learning (SEL), universal design for learning (UDL), teaching reading comprehension, text processing strategies, and vocabulary development. The guide is organized into three sections.

This report presents the findings of a survey conducted as part of the Uzbekistan Education for Excellence Program. The survey aimed to assess the adoption and use of new English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teaching and learning materials (Grades 1-11) in public schools throughout Uzbekistan during the 2022-2023 academic year. The evaluation focused on the implementation and adoption of the Cambridge series Guess What! and Prepare, as well as their impact on student learning, as perceived by teachers. An approach, involving qualitative and quantitative data analysis, was employed.

The Uzbekistan Education for Excellence Program (the Program), funded by the United States Agency for International Development, designed the teacher professional development (TPD) effectiveness study to assess the effectiveness of the Program’s TPD approach in terms of teachers’ satisfaction of learning events, their acquisition of knowledge and skills, their shift in self-efficacy, possible changes in teacher beliefs about new teaching approaches, and to what extent teachers received the necessary support at the administrative and school levels. The Program also used quality assurance data derived from the study to minimize dilution effects of the cascade approach and to inform and adapt the ongoing TPD activities as needed.

The Uzbekistan Ministry of Preschool and School Education (MoPSE) has embarked upon an ambitious reform agenda to bring the Uzbek public education system in line with twenty-first century international standards and skills. This agenda is enshrined in several presidential decrees.1 The reform agenda includes numerous initiatives, including developing a new national curriculum framework and a laser focus on increasing information and communication technology and English as a foreign language skills through the IT Nation and English-Speaking Nation initiatives. Reform efforts also include participating for the first time in the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) in 2021 and in the Program for International Student Assessment in 2022 (PISA). MoPSE has committed to reaching a PIRLS ranking of 30 or higher by 2030, but reform takes time and challenges persist. At the onset of the Uzbekistan Education for Excellence Program (UEEP), the teaching culture in many schools in Uzbekistan was still quite teacher-centric, with only a modicum of observable student-centered instructional strategies promoting critical thinking, creativity, communication, and collaboration. Basic reading and mathematics scores were within the international mean, but students struggled with reading comprehension and more complex mathematics.