In Kyrgyzstan, the challenge of education in the face of strong demographic growth

Inadequate school programs, teacher shortages, obsolete textbooks, overcrowded classes and dilapidated schools: evils that Kyrgyzstan wants to eradicate to modernize its educational system and ensure the economic development of this Central Asian country.

“My son did not have a mathematics teacher in the first term, high school students taught in his place,” Azamat Bekenov, father of three schoolchildren in Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital, told AFP.

A common situation in Kyrgyzstan, where around a thousand teachers were missing in 2025, forcing families to make do.

“With the parents of the students we were looking for teachers, I wrote on Facebook,” explains Mr. Bekenov, who ended up finding a replacement.

The needs are exponential due to the strong demographic growth of Kyrgyzstan, where some 40% of the seven million inhabitants are minors.

According to manager Sadyr Japarov, 500,000 students have joined the school over the last ten years. A 50% increase that the system is struggling to absorb, with many overcrowded classes, as noted by AFP.

“There are 52 students in my son's class and 50 in my daughter's. My eldest is doing well, there are only 38,” Mr. Bekenov quips.

As for the content of the courses, the authorities point to a school program that is "irremediably obsolete and of very poor quality" and note the low level of the teachers themselves, trained after independence in 1991.

- "On the brink of the abyss" -

After three post-Soviet decades marked by economic collapse, massive immigration and social instability, the education system is "on the brink of the abyss", according to the unions.

Among the measures implemented: the increase from eleven to twelve years of compulsory education, the construction of schools, the increase in teachers' salaries, the supply of textbooks by Moscow, 22% of the state budget allocated for Education...

According to the government, these measures must train qualified youth to ensure long-term economic growth and finally stem the emigration of hundreds of thousands of Kyrgyz to Russia.

As a corollary of a poor education system, labor productivity in Kyrgyzstan is the lowest in Europe and Central Asia, according to a United Nations report in 2023, and a quarter of the population lives on less than fifty euros per month.

Last in 2006 and 2009 in the international PISA test, Kyrgyzstan tried its luck again in 2025 and is awaiting its result to benefit from the advice of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The task is considerable to make up for the accumulated delay.

“I teach history. The subject should come to life, with maps, archive images. I want to introduce children to the world (..) but there is nothing in the classroom,” explains Goulmira Oumetaliev