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Tajikistan
Education
Soviet social policy created a modern education system in Tajikistan
where nothing comparable had existed before. However, by the time
the republic became independent the quality and availability of
education had not reached the Soviet Union-wide average, still
less the standards for Western industrial societies. After independence,
the education system remained under the control of the national
Ministry of Education with full state funding.
Historical Development
By the 1920s, few Tajiks had received a formal education. According
to the first Soviet census, in 1926 the literacy rate was 4 percent
for Tajik men and 0.1 percent for Tajik women in the territory
of present-day Tajikistan and in the Republic of Uzbekistan. During
the late 1930s, the Soviet government began to expand the network
of state-run schools. There was strong public opposition to this
change, especially from Islamic leaders. As a result, some new
state schools were burned and some teachers were killed.
Over the ensuing decades, however, the Soviet education system
prevailed, although a uniform set of standards was not established
in every instance. For the average Tajikistani citizen in the
1980s, the duration, if not necessarily the quality, of the education
process was neither the greatest nor the least among Soviet republics.
As elsewhere in the Soviet Union, the system was divided into
schools for primary, middle (or secondary), and higher education.
Middle schools were differentiated as either general or specialized.
For the period between 1985 and 1990, an annual average of 86,800
students attended general-education middle schools and an average
of 41,500 students attended specialized middle schools. In the
academic year 1990-91, Tajikistan reported 68,800 students in
institutions of higher education.
Data as of March 1996
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