SCARY STATISTICS: THE STATE OF SCHOOLS IN KYRGYZSTAN

Anvar Rahmetov

Kyrgyz school education is in a catastrophic situation. The reading skills of 74 percent of fifteen-year old Kyrgyzstanis are below basic (“pass”) level. Math and sciences results are even worse – failing students constitute 84 percent and 82 percent respectively. Such were the shocking findings of an independent national survey administered in 2008. Earlier in 2006, Kyrgyzstan recorded the lowest score among the 57 countries that participated in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). With the Kyrgyz data for PISA-2009 just being processed, nothing can be stated confidently. However, the virtual inaction of responsible state bodies throughout the year hint that the situation is virtually unchanged.

BACKGROUND: Numerous factors contributed to the Kyrgyz fiasco, with most attention paid to system-wide ones. The foremost reason for failure is, of course, inadequate financing. A financially incapable, corruption-ridden Kyrgyz state cannot sustain its educational system.

One dimension of under-financing is low salaries. To quote a teacher at the outskirts of the capital Bishkek, “If I were paid 100 dollars a month, teaching would be my dream job and education attainments of my students would be far better.” Low wages force teachers to increase their workload, teaching 36 classes a week instead of the standard 18.  Small salaries also scare away the youth and cause a cadre deficit in schools – almost half the schools need at least 1-2 teachers, while a fifth needs from 5 to 10 teachers.

Financial stringency has also depleted schools’ resource base. As was discovered by the said surveys, libraries in 17 percent of the schools have nothing besides textbooks and newspapers. Even with textbooks, schoolmasters report, their schools are equipped to 71 percent of their needs. On average, three students have to share a single textbook. The present textbooks are widely reported to include those published in the Soviet Union, Uzbekistan, and Russia at different times and are said to contradict each other frequently. The situation with illustrations for science classes, scientific equipment and models is even worse. A predominant majority of schools simply does not have them. IT statistics are also depressing: the student-computer ratio at Kyrgyz schools is 77 to 1 (and was 212:1 in 2005) and only 1,5 percent of the schools have an Internet connection. Nevertheless, monetary injections in themselves are not a panacea. The fact that richer states like Qatar and Azerbaijan fare only slightly better suggests that money might be a necessary, but not sufficient element in successful education.

Another factor is corruption in the educational sphere. Corruption impedes effective use of state resources and donor aid. For instance, NTS, a local TV channel, recently featured a story of schoolmasters misusing donor money in infrastructure renovation projects. Petty corruption includes both school corruption with children or their parents bribing teachers in exchange for good grades, as well as corruption in college admissions which de-motivate vigorous knowledge acquisition, since high school students know they can buy their way into college.

A third factor that contributed to the eventual failure of a once-progressive educational system is the lack of strategic vision and the absence of a single strategy for education reform. After the break-up of the USSR, the Soviet school system could not be sustained, nor was it relevant to contemporary social and economic needs. The consequent reform attempts have been piecemeal, inconsistent and half-hearted. Moreover, programmatic papers drafted by education specialists were often left unimplemented. Frequent ministerial reshuffles also contributed: with an average education minister in office for slightly more than a year, consistency talk is totally irrelevant.

IMPLICATIONS: Initially, the publication of these results caused a wide resonance within the mass media, civil society and decision-makers. The State Security Council was to be summoned, numerous roundtables were held, but regrettably, to no use.

The consequences are shocking and far-reaching indeed. To put it in the words of a local education expert, “If no decisive action is taken today, the country of Kyrgyzstan might as well be ‘closed’ in a couple of years.” Math and science results put temporarily aside, the fact that 73 percent of high school students’ reading skills are below the basic level indicates that overall literacy levels in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan are in sharp decline.

One implication of this is that a well educated and critically thinking public, a supporting pillar for democratic change and a resource previously associated with Kyrgyzstan’s 98 percent literate population, is now an illusion. Kyrgyzstan is slipping down the illiteracy slope and will, in half a generation; end up with literacy rates of typical developing countries.

Occasional observations suggest that the inability to read and comprehend effectively is in part caused by the fact that pupils in different regions of Kyrgyzstan speak and are taught in dialects that slightly differ from literary Kyrgyz and Uzbek. This might in turn put the Kyrgyz nation-building efforts at risk. A standardized language being a foundation of any nation-building project, if Kyrgyz at various localities speak dialects and hardly comprehend “high” (“literary”) Kyrgyz, sooner or later this might endanger the very nationhood of the Kyrgyz. This danger is especially potent combined with currently exacerbated regional and clan divisions in society.

Aside from reading comprehension, Kyrgyz pupils have a dismal math and science record. Combined with the fact that college admission rates have not fallen due to bad school education, this means that these pupils will eventually end up in technical and medical schools and later govern the Kyrgyz economy and the country’s finances, direct its construction works and lead its technical and scientific innovation efforts. Such specialists would then be a liability, rather than an asset, to the fragile Kyrgyz economy, bringing down its once-praised human capital to the already low other levels of other types of capital.

CONCLUSIONS: A sadly ironical statement by a journalist diagnosed Kyrgyz school education as “rather dead than sick.” What the system needs now is reanimation, a shock therapy of financial injections, strict oversight to make sure that such injections are not misused, a coherent strategy of treatment as well as better communication and cooperation with other systems that need and provide the school system, from pre-school kindergartens to big employers and higher education establishments.

AUTHOR’S BIO: Anvar Rahmetov is a freelance journalist based in Bishkek. He is a graduate of the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan and the Central European University in Budapest, Hungary.