“I Am a Reader” competition showcases student enthusiasm for education in Tajikistan

On Thursday, June 4, the USAID Quality Reading Project’s Umeda Ermatova stood before an eager, uniformed second-grade classroom in the city of Kulob in southern Tajikistan, preparing to proctor a reading exam. When she asked what work the students had done over the course of the past academic year, small hands shot into the air.

“I wrote a story based on a picture of a lake,” one boy proudly reported. A girl on the other side of the room piped up, “I memorized a poem about a village family.”

Excitement about reading is on the rise in Tajik classrooms. These children – in sum 37 students from 12 Kulob schools – were gathered in School Number 51 to participate in the USAID Quality Reading Project’s pilot “I Am a Reader” literacy competition. The event was organized with the close cooperation of the Ministry of Education and Science (MOES), and both MOES and project staff were in attendance.

In the opening ceremony, district MOES representative Safarmamad Alimardonov, the Head of Primary Education in the Khatlon Regional Education Department, said that events like this “encourage students to progress in their education and in reading; simultaneously, they compel teachers to use standards that allow their students to actively participate [in such competitions].” 

The competition, designed to incentivize Tajik language reading progress among 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders, was implemented for the first time in the city of Kulob on the 4th of June. A second pilot competition took place in the city of Kurgon-Teppa the following day, with the participation of 30 students from ten city schools. Alimardonov, as well as representatives from the Education Department of the City of Kurgon-Teppa, Malohat Nurmadova and Saodat Karimova, took part in the facilitation of the event. Awaiting MOES approval, the USAID Quality Reading Project intends to expand this program to schools all over the country, with the hope of encouraging competition and reading excellence among young students.

In actuality a comprehensive literacy exam, the competition is comprised of four parts: a multiple choice reading comprehension test, a written portion asking students to write a story based on a provided image, a brief vocabulary quiz, and an oral portion in which students recount a story they have read and then read a text aloud to the best of their ability. 

In Kulob School 51, the students were seated in rows and obliged to read silently, but one second grade girl appeared to read best by making sweeping gestures and reading aloud to herself, to the amusement of proctors and classmates. 

Not all students were smiling. A handful of girls not officially registered for the competition were seen in the hallways of School 51 with tears streaming down their faces when they were initially turned away from competition classrooms. The USAID Quality Reading Project’s Deputy Chief of Party, Kathryn Fleming, remarked, “While it’s sad to see children crying, it is really exciting to see children crying about reading.” (The girls were ultimately allowed to take part; after all, this was only a pilot.)

At the concluding ceremony, only three winners from each grade were recognized with books and framed awards, but every student was acknowledged with a certificate of participation. As Alimardonov stated in his opening remarks, “It should not go unsaid, dear students, that your participation in this competition is already a victory.”

As they walked to receive their prizes from USAID Quality Reading Project and MOES representatives, most were smiling. A few tearful faces could be spotted in the crowd: presumably, children disappointed that they had not won. Nevertheless, they were “children crying about reading,” and this is just the kind of enthusiasm that the USAID Quality Reading Project has aimed to inspire.

For further information, please contact: Barbara Greenwood/USAID Reading Together Project in Kyrgyzstan, Chief of Party: email bgreenwood@air.org; Kate Fleming/USAID Quality Reading Project in Tajikistan, Deputy Chief of Party: e-mail address: kfleming@air.org