and local governments in Uzbekistan provided substantial support to teachers and students during COVID-induced school closures. This support could be one of the reasons why students in Uzbekistan did not experience substantial learning losses, at least in mathematics in basic education, in contrast to learning losses observed in other countries.

Besides government efforts, parents in Uzbekistan engaged significantly with their children to ensure continuity in learning. The recent PIRLS 2021 (Mullis et al. 2021) results provide additional information about the role of parents during the pandemic. Interestingly, 57 percent of parents of attending students declare that they engaged in reading activities even before schools started –one of the highest shares among participating countries. Parents also provide other support, for example, books (83 percent compared to an international average of 71 percent) and online instruction or tutoring (65 of parents versus 50 percent). However, authorities in Uzbekistan were right to rely on television broadcasts for instruction since the country lags far behind others in providing digital devices and digitally-based learning activities.

Success with the distance education modality in Uzbekistan seems to be supported by international experience. Remote instruction through phone call tutorials, SMS messages, and other measures, were found to be effective in reducing learning loss during the pandemic in a five-country study of multiple scalable models (Angrist et al. 2023). Uzbekistan’s model is more like blended learning since the local teachers also participated. Using technology to individualize content to students or bolster teacher capacity to deliver lessons is promising. Blended teaching programs combine modern online teaching and traditional offline instruction by partially replacing or supplementing in-person instruction with remote lectures, such as live broadcasted lessons, pre-recorded lecture videos, and TV shows. Studies provide evidence suggesting a positive role of hybrid teaching programs in improving educational outcomes in underserved regions where local teachers may not fully master the subject matter they are expected to teach or may not have sufficient teaching skills to deliver effective lectures (Beg et al. 2019; Bettinger et al. 2020; Bianchi et al. 2022; Borghesan and Vasey 2021; Borzekowski 2018; Borzekowski and Henry 2011; Borzekowski et al. 2019; Näslund-Hadley et al. 2014; Navarro-Sola 2021; Wennersten et al. 2015). The blended learning approach may help make up for the lack of quality teachers, especially in rural areas. A recent evaluation of a hybrid learning model shows significant learning gains (Li et al. 2023). China’s Dual-Teacher program, a computer-assisted instruction program, makes lecture videos and other teaching resources from an elite urban middle school available through the internet to schools in poor and remote areas. The evaluation shows significant improvement in student performance in math by 0.98 standard deviations over the three-year middle school education. This is an effective and low-cost means to improve education outcomes in underserved areas. Its low cost is due to low implementation costs.

In addition to supporting teachers and students in response to COVID-induced school closures, the Government of Uzbekistan has demonstrated increased commitment to improving education outcomes in recent years. During the period 2021 to 2022, Uzbekistan participated for the first time in all major international assessments including Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), and Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). The improvement in learning outcomes observed for grade 5 can be a reflection of the results of these government efforts. Further investigation using 8