Education NewsSeptember 10, 2026 · 2 min
On 1 September Uzbekistan marks 35 years of independence. We gathered official statistics on how the system our children study in has changed: a third more schools, four times more private schools in four years, and preschool coverage up to 72.4%.
On 1 September Uzbekistan marks 35 years of independence: state independence was proclaimed on 31 August 1991, and 1 September was declared a public holiday. The anniversary carries the official motto "With one Homeland and one people we will build a new life and a new future!". We gathered figures from the National Statistics Committee on how the system our children study in has changed over these years.
At the start of the 1990/1991 school year the country had 8,333 general secondary schools. By the start of 2025/2026 there were 11,118 — roughly a third more. They now teach 6.87 million children, with 94,000 more pupils added in the past year alone. In 2025/2026, 725,300 children entered first grade, 6.8% more than a year earlier.
The growth was not steady: the network expanded most noticeably in recent years. In the 2025/2026 school year alone, 175 new schools opened.
Private schools have been permitted in Uzbekistan since the first Education Act of 1992, but they only became widespread recently. The number of operating private schools grew as follows: 135 in 2021/2022, 293 in 2023/2024, 455 in 2024/2025 and 551 in 2025/2026 — about 5% of all schools in the country.
They are distributed very unevenly. Tashkent has 145 private schools and the Fergana region 121: two regions account for almost half of all private schools nationwide. By comparison, the Navoi and Surkhandarya regions have just five each.
Preschool education has changed the most. At the end of 2020, 50.9% of children aged 3–6 attended kindergarten; by the end of 2024 the figure had reached 72.4%. Preschool institutions now enrol 2.35 million children.
The headline figure of "38,000 kindergartens" deserves a closer look: 28,700 of them are family-run private kindergartens opened in homes and flats. That format accounts for most of the growth, while the number of conventional kindergartens is considerably smaller.
For the 35th anniversary of independence, 163 facilities were commissioned across the country, 91 of them social infrastructure: 43 schools, 36 kindergartens, 7 higher education institutions and 3 hospitals.
Seven national programmes for the coming decade were announced at the same time. The first is "Education and the Professions of the Future". Its stated goals include raising the share of six-year-olds in preparatory classes to 100% and maintaining incentives for opening private kindergartens. No specific deadlines have been named for these points yet.
Keep in mind that 1 September in Uzbekistan is Independence Day, not the first day of school, and it is a public holiday. The new academic year begins the next day, on 2 September.
The BeeKids directory currently lists 595 institutions across 14 cities: 251 kindergartens, 170 schools and 163 development centres — with addresses, prices and parent reviews.
