The Alliance of CSOs in Tajikistan for Education (ACTE) aims at promoting quality and inclusive education for all in a lifelong learning framework, based on the human rights principles.

The Republic of Tajikistan is a country in the southeast of Central Asia bordering Afghanistan, China, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. The resident population of Tajikistan at the beginning of 2021 reached more than 9,5 million people and more than 89% of the population is Tajik. More than 73% of the population of Tajikistan lives in rural areas, and due to the growth of the economy by an average of 7% a year in Tajikistan between 2000 and 2019, the poverty rate fell from 83% to 26.3%. Tajikistan, as a former republic of the Soviet Union, inherited an education system that now provides compulsory education for 99.8% of children ages 7 to 16. This right is guaranteed by the Constitution of the Republic of Tajikistan.

In the next two years ACTE will work on:

• Strengthening ACTE as a national platform to engage in policy dialogues
• Increasing knowledge and capacity of ACTE members on policy processes, especially engagement in SDG 4 implementation
• Increasing strategic participation of ACTE members and influence in policies, especially for improved mechanism to include children, young people with disability and other forms of discrimination in education policies and programs
• Monitoring and accountability mechanisms of public national education to ensure the delivery of transformative policies and programs that accelerate access, learning outcomes, and gender equality, leaving no one behind.

ACTE will achieve the objectives through membership expansion ensuring representation from marginalized communities and ethnic groups, capacity building of members on education sector plan from gender perspective, on education system budget analysis.

ACTE will participate in Local Education Group meetings to influence the national education sector plan by bringing the voices of the community, including vulnerable groups; will analyze the education budget of one province; conduct public hearings with community regarding SDG4 implementation.

ACTE will ensure strategic participation and engagement with policy makers to promote the ratification of CRPD Local community will conduct public monitoring to increase the responsibility of local education institutions to provide quality education.

ACTE will share learning within the members and other stakeholders through publication of best practice documents and case story at national and regional level platforms.

ACTE will also ensure engagement with learning partners of OC 2 and OC 3 for national and regional advocacy.

The first phase of the project was implemented in 2020-2021 with support from Education Out Loud of 100.848 USD.