What led to this progress? 

To understand the present, you have to examine the past.  

In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed leaving Uzbekistan with an early childhood education system in serious disrepair. Enrolment is estimated to have fallen from above 70% to below 40% in the years that followed, while the number of kindergartens declined by an estimated 45% between 1999 and 2019. Teachers went without retraining, government funding fell short, and access in rural areas became particularly precarious. 

In 2012, only 23% of children aged 3 to 6 attended preschool. Plans at that time were modest: a government strategy aimed to raise that share to 32% by 2016/17. Yet what followed was something considerably more ambitious. Preschool participation reached 84% in 2024.  

Legislative foundations and a new Ministry 

A Presidential Decree issued in late 2016, titled “Measures Aimed at Further Improvement of the Pre-School Education System in 2017 to 2021”, marked the beginning of a concerted national effort. In 2017 alone, eleven distinct preschool policies were introduced, among them the establishment of a dedicated Ministry of Preschool Education to centralise management and coordination across the country. 

Additional legal foundations were put in place. In 2019, a Law on Preschool Education guaranteed every child one year of preschool before primary school entry. Regulations defined clear standards for facilities, teacher training and budgets, and assigned specific responsibilities to central and regional authorities. In 2018, free one-year school preparatory groups were piloted in select regions, enrolling over 11,000 children. By 2020, these groups had been fully rolled out nationally.