Uzbekistan—Education System

Uzbekistan has a comprehensive system of education that embraces the entire population. Although the lands that now constitute Uzbekistan have been centers of higher learning for centuries, the system of education as it exists today has its roots in the Soviet era and thus follows the modern European model of state-based, free, compulsory, universal, and secular instruction.

The basic structure of Uzbekistan's education system survived the breakup of the USSR. After nine years of compulsory education, students continue in vocational or academic streams, on the basis of their examination results. The infrastructure of primary and secondary education remains in place. Five million children study at school, and more than a million are enrolled at kindergarten level. (See Table 1.) In other ways, however, there have been drastic changes.

The end of central planning has necessitated new ways of funding education, and such resources have not always been forthcoming. Material difficulties, such as poor physical plants, shortages of textbooks and supplies, and low salaries for teachers, pose the largest threat to the system. Other problems arise from the disruption of contacts with academic institutions in the former USSR, which have not always been replaced by new ones. The government has also sought to downplay the public visibility of Russian, while emphasizing Uzbek-language education. Nevertheless Russian remains the only foreign language most people know. Russian schools continue to exist, and Russian remains a compulsory subject in non-Russian schools. Although the government would like to replace Russian with English as the means of communication with the outside world, such a switch remains highly unlikely given the shortages of teachers. Higher education has suffered from brain drain as well as from shortages.

Another significant feature of the period since independence has been the reemergence of Islamic education. The government acknowledges Islam as part of the spiritual heritage of the nation, but it is also wary of political challenges from a religious opposition. It therefore keeps tight control over religious education. Only schools under the supervision of the Muslim Religious Board of Uzbekistan, a government department, are allowed to operate, and their curricula meet basic requirements set by the Ministry of Education. State schools remain resolutely secular, with no religious instruction whatsoever.

Bendrikov, K. E. (1960). Ocherki po istorii narodnogo obrazovaniia v Turkestane (Sketches from the History of Public Education in Turkestan). Moscow: Akademiia pedagogicheskii nauk.

Medlin, William K., William M. Cave, and Finley Carpenter. (1971) Education and Development in Central Asia: A Case Study on Social Change in Uzbekistan. Leiden, Netherlands: E. J. Brill.

UNESCO. (1999) Statistical Yearbook, 1999. Paris: UNESCO.