Focus Areas

The Education Support Program's national policy projects aimed to build consensus on education reform priorities. ESP worked with local NGOs and governments in many countries on facilitating dialogue, information-gathering, and exchange on national education strategies and institution-building efforts.

As a national policy project, Reform Strategy for Education in Ukraine, a paper published by the Ministry of Education and Science in 2003, represents a joint effort of education stakeholders, NGOs, local and international experts, bi-lateral and intergovernmental organizations. The project was supported in partnership with OSI, UNDP, British Council, UNICEF, and others.

In Ukraine, after five years of work by the International Renaissance Foundation to contribute to building of a new testing system, the government introduced national examination reforms. The foundation, with technical support from the ESP, sought these changes to combat widespread use of bribery to secure admission to prestigious departments and universities in Ukraine. The new examination reforms links secondary-school exit exams with higher education entrance exams. For more information on this project and the reform, please see "Ukrainian National Examination Reform Receives $5 Million in Support from U.S. Government."

In some of the SEE countries, in particular in Montenegro, Macedonia and Serbia (up to end of 2003), the main support of the local Soros foundations in cooperation with ESP has been directed to overall reform of the national education system. In all three countries special Protocols on Cooperation were signed with respective Ministries of Education. The support has focused on almost all key aspects of national education reforms: from basic design of overall national education reform strategies to specific emphasis on education legislation, textbook and curricula reforms, and institution building.

For further information on SEE national policy projects, contact osep-see@zavod-irc.si. For further assistance with Central Asia national policy projects, contact espassistance@osi.hu.