Reviews of National Policies for Education: Kyrgyz Republic 2010
Lessons from PISA
The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is a highly influential instrument for monitoring the quality of education systems and provides a strong evidence base for informed policy making and education research. PISA also has a proven potential to trigger reforms and stimulate stakeholder involvement in the process.
Notwithstanding the importance of its ranking, the full strength of PISA unfolds when data it delivers is utilised in the national policy domain. Linking PISA outcomes and policy choices, and monitoring the impact on education quality is thereby a demanding task, which requires sound analytical capacity, and also knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of the respective education system. The OECD Directorate for Education addresses the demand of non-member economies for policy support in understanding and analysing PISA data in the broader context of education system management and policy formulation.
This report explains the reasons for the dramatically low performance of Kyrgyz students in the 2006 PISA survey, despite significant resources and efforts invested in education by schools, parents and government. The report reveals that a number of policy areas are in need of urgent attention and recommends ways to close the currently existing gap between aspirations and education reform achievement.
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Higher education and research
Since 1992, higher education in the Kyrgyz Republic has gone through profound changes. Student numbers have increased massively (from 10% to almost 50% of their age cohorts) with almost half of them studying in some form of distance or part-time arrangements. Public Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have become hugely dependent on private fees. Although the great majority of students attend public HEIs, less than 20% receive state aid, a large proportion of which is earmarked for teacher training. The absence of a strategy for the development of the sector has meant that there has been no evolution of appropriate quality assurance or of accountability mechanisms for HEIs. Science and research activities are spread among a myriad of small institutes run by the Academy of Science and the line Ministries or within the HEIs, thus fatally dissipating the very small amount of funding available for research. The chapter briefly describes the system, raises some critical issues and suggests policy options for discussion on what kind of system is appropriate at a time when the country urgently needs to improve its competitiveness through the availability of well educated human capital.
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