Support of VET reforms in Uzbekistan

The Uzbek Government initiated ambitious reforms to modernise and diversify its economy with the aim to make Uzbekistan a competitive upper-middle-income country by 2030.

SFUVET’s approach is to implement the situated VET approach and through that smoothly change the cooperative attitude between the schools and the business. In various projects it could be observed that the focus on attitudes impacts a lot the VET system because it changes the deeper layer of the dynamics of the actors. These changes may produce unexpectedly good results. The SFUVET intervention aims at a smooth change of the mindset and the readiness to cooperate in the system due to the focus on attitudes and their relevance in successful VET.

Project overview

The ongoing VET reform in Uzbekistan was initialised by setting into force the presidential decree in 2019. The decree defines a spectacular change in the implementation of VET and demands the inclusion of the business – which is not yet ready and lacks confidence. In the framework of the support of the VET reform SFUVET plays an important role as an advisor and expert organisation in 4 areas: Governance; Quality assurance; Capacity building of teachers; Public-private partnership.

The challenge in the implementation is substantial as in Uzbekistan historically rooted there is no functioning horizontal cooperation between involved ministries and no shared understanding of good VET. The teaching style is rather outdated, there are no useful facilities and no systemic cooperation between business and schools.