Uzbekistan is the only country in the Former Soviet Union (FSU) with a fast growing population, and people are the country’s main resource.

Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat Mirziyoyev has launched a sweeping set of reforms and has included education as a top priority. Dozens of new universities have been built since the programme began in 2016 and the number of teachers has tripled to over 151,000. The recent changes to the constitution specifically mentioned teachers and the need to improve their social status.

“The numbers are all growing,” says Khilola Umarova, Uzbekistan’s Minister of Education. “More than 2mn kids enrolled last year. There are now over 10,400 schools, including 14 presidential schools [for the most talented students], which serve some 6.4mn students. The number of private schools has increased eleven-fold to more than 5,600 establishments.”

Uzbekistan has jockeyed to play a leading role in education at a global level. Last year UNESCO held the World Conference on Early Childhood Care and Education in Uzbekistan, and members signed off on the Tashkent Declaration that sets the main vectors for development of early childhood care and education (ECCE) amongst members until 2030 – a milestone for the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The declaration has now become a guide for international organisations and relevant ministries of the countries participating in the world for setting education standards and practices based on fundamental factors such as the development and support of teachers, broad introduction of innovations and state support for the education sphere. 

“Now we know exactly the direction we want to go in and there are exact goals to increasing the international rating of our education,” says Umarova, adding the ministry has a strategy mapped out to 2030 that includes both short-term and long-term targets.

Since then Uzbekistan has been working hard to bring its education system up to scratch. Umarova says that a new system of teacher classification has been introduced that covers half the work force and links their pay to their performance as an incentive for excellence.

A series of specialised schools have been set up that include the presidential schools, special subject schools, and art and music schools for talented students.

Reaching out to international partners has been a big part of the programme and Uzbekistan counts the likes of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cambridge University as partners. The number of universities have risen from 72 to 210 today, including 30 foreign-run universities and 65 privately run universities.

“The emphasis now that the system is starting to be well developed is to shift to improving the quality,” says Umarova. “That includes attracting more foreign professors to work here.”

One of the projects is to develop the New Uzbekistan University in co-operation with Germany’s Technical University of Munich (TUM) – one of Europe's leading universities, which focuses on the engineering sciences, natural sciences, life sciences and other subjects applicable to entrepreneurship and engineering.

“Uzbekistan is taking a revolutionary approach to implementing the reforms and it is going incredibly fast,” says Frederica Hettinger, TUM’s managing director. “What we are doing here is introducing the German higher education system and TUM is the number one in Europe in terms of alumni employment rankings. It's an application-orientated curriculum that encourages multidisciplinary entrepreneurialism and creates a bridge between industry and academia.”

Thanks to Uzbekistan's robust demographics, the total student population is anticipated to climb to 7.6mn in 2026 and then to 8.6mn by 2030. “Today there is already impressive achievements in coverage and now the ongoing shift to quality, inclusiveness and equality is also paying off,” says Manir Maletus of UNICEF and one of Uzbekistan’s advisors.

But there is still more to do, as Maletus says there is still a gap in coverage as 42% of 15-29 year olds are still not in some kind of education or training.

“The challenge will be to keep up the pace of reforms, as we want to do it fast and we want results,” says Maletus.

Uzbekistan is also co-ordinating its reforms with Russia, which has long been the leading light of academic excellence in the region and faces many of the same challenges as Uzbekistan in modernising its education system.

“The toughest challenge is reforms in rural areas,” says Vladimir Fillipov, the head of the Russian Academy of Education and a former Minister of Education. “In Russia we closed a 1,000 rural schools as they were underperforming. We introduced a system of school buses to and then focused on the standard of teaching and especially the STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects. STEM standards need to be introduced at all levels, not just in the elite schools.”

MIT is also a key partner and developing a comprehensive programme for Uzbekistan to constantly assess the system and encourage ceaseless innovation.

“It’s not just about raising the ceiling; it’s also about raising the floor,” says Vijay Kumar, a director of MIT’s OpenCourseWare (OCW) advisory group.

Steve King, head of Europe and Asia from Cambridge University’s partnership for education, also noted the fast pace of change.

“The pace of change is remarkable and the enhancement in quality visible,” says King. “At the university here we select students from any region purely on the basis of their ability and critical thinking and problem solving skills.”

The president described the New Uzbekistan project as the country’s third renaissance – the fast remaking of the country to meet the challenges of a new century where the country is transforming quickly.