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Kyrgyzstan
Instruction
General education traditionally has been accessible to nearly
all children in Kyrgyzstan. In primary and secondary grades, about
51 percent of students are female; that number increases to 55
percent in higher education, with a converse majority of males
in vocational programs. There is little difference in school attendance
between urban and rural areas or among the provinces. Higher education,
however, has been much more available to the urban and more wealthy
segments of the population. Because of a shortage of schools,
37 percent of general education students attend schools operating
in two or three shifts. Construction of new facilities has lagged
behind enrollment growth, the rate of which has been nearly 3
percent per year.
In line with the reform of 1992, children start school at age
six and are required to complete grade nine. The general education
program has three stages: grades one through four, grades five
through nine, and grades ten and eleven. Students completing grade
nine may continue into advanced or specialized (college preparatory)
secondary curricula or into a technical and vocational program.
The school year is thirty-four weeks long, extending from the
beginning of September until the end of May. The instruction week
is twenty-five hours long for grades one through four and thirty-two
hours for grades five through eleven. In 1992 about 960,000 students
were enrolled in general education courses, 42,000 in specialized
secondary programs, 49,000 in vocational programs, and 58,000
in institutions of higher education. About 1,800 schools were
in operation in 1992. That year Kyrgyzstan's state system had
about 65,000 teachers, but an estimated 8,000 teachers resigned
in 1992 alone because of poor salaries and a heavy work load that
included double shifts for many. Emigration also has depleted
the teaching staff. In 1993 the national pupil-teacher ratio for
grades one through eleven was 14.4 to 1, slightly higher in rural
areas, and considerably higher in the primary grades. The city
of Bishkek, however, had a ratio of almost 19 to 1.
Data as of March 1996
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