Comparative and International Higher Education Policy Specialist; Focus on Central Asia
If cats did celebrations... PS Women: you don't need a cat to be successful. But you knew that already. 8th March saw the annual marking of International Women's Day (IWD), which is a formal opportunity to celebrate female success on the one hand, but also a time to lament the continued global persistence of male-dominated …
Continue reading International Women’s Day: Celebrating female success, still marching for progress
With the opening up of Uzbekistan under President Mirziyoyev, I have been able to expand my blog's coverage beyond my traditional territories of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The dominant narratives for higher education in Uzbekistan over the past couple of years have been the dizzying speed of reforms and the massive drive to internationalize the …
Continue reading On the slow progress on women’s rights in Uzbekistan
Happy new year! I hope that 2019 will bring you health and happiness, and I hope that the world becomes a slightly more sensible place this year (I can hope, right?). Kicking off the year is a wonderful story about an inspiring teacher in rural Tajikistan who over the course of many years has shown …
Continue reading Empowering girls through education in Tajikistan
It’s university admissions season in Tajikistan and as a record number of school leavers sit the nationwide university entrance exams, ever-reliable news outlet Asia-Plus took a look at the prospects for the class of 2021. This unified nationwide testing system was introduced in 2013 as part of a project funded by the World Bank and …
Continue reading University admissions in Tajikistan: Who wants to be an engineer?
After a recent blog post I published on Women in higher education in Central Asia, I was approached by University World News to write more about why it is that some women in Central Asia - particularly those in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan - are doing so much better (better even than the world average) in getting to university than …
Continue reading Gender gaps in higher education across Central Asia
Happy new year / S novim godom / Soli nav muborak to you all! Kickstarting this year's set of posts is a report from Kyrgyzstan on steps being taken - primarily by the government and a small but growing number of local NGOs - to bring greater equality to the country. The article can be …
Continue reading Steps towards gender equality in Kyrgyzstan
UNDP has produced this eye-catching visual representation of what would otherwise be a very long statistics heavy report showing the state of education in Uzbekistan, which a focus on the differences in participation and outcome based on gender. Reproduced below (c) UNDP Uzbekistan, source http://visual.ly/women-and-men-uzbekistan-difference-education. Infographics are an excellent way of familiarising people with what can …
Continue reading Visualising educational disparity in Uzbekistan
Emma Sabzalieva 