Following its departure from the Soviet Union, the nation of Turkmenistan has endeavored to establish its own national sovereignty while modernizing critical infrastructure, including its public schooling frameworks. Below are eight facts about education in Turkmenistan.

8 Facts About Education in Turkmenistan

1. Turkmenistan has an impressively high literacy rate. According to the most recent World Bank data (2022), Turkmenistan’s adult literacy rate stands at approximately 99.9%, placing it among the top ten countries globally.
2. Turkmenistan has added two years to its education system. Before 2013, Turkmen children only attended school for ten years before higher education. However, new legislation added two years to this system. Children in Turkmenistan now attend primary school for four years, secondary school for six, and choose a course of study for their final two years.
3. Turkmenistan’s higher education system is largely inadequate. Turkmenistan faces a severe shortage of qualified teachers at the higher education level. As a result, universities can only adequately accommodate under 10% of students graduating from high school, a significant problem.
4. Turkmenistan faces issues with bribery, including in the education system. Transparency International ranks Turkmenistan as one of the world’s 10 most corrupt states, with bribery reportedly a necessity in many different systems, including the education system. For their children to gain admission to institutions of higher education, parents often need to pay thousands of dollars to officials. Furthermore, officials gave teachers in the Lebap region only one day to receive their medical examinations, in order to extort bribes from them. Such a corrupt system interferes with students getting the education they deserve.
5. Young students in Turkmenistan have relatively low numeracy rates. Although 82% of children ages 7-14 possess basic reading skills, only 70% of children in the same age group have basic numeracy skills. Children in Turkmenistan therefore display a significantly greater aptitude for reading than numeracy, indicating a potential gap in what they are learning.
6. People in Turkmenistan, particularly women, do not receive much upper-level education. While the completion rate of lower secondary school is high and essentially the same for girls and boys (94% vs. 95%), the attendance rate for upper secondary school is only 13% for girls, as opposed to 18% for boys. Furthermore, in 2019, 5% of women pursued higher education, as opposed to 10% of men. Not only are these attendance rates for upper-level education very low across gender, they are significantly lower for women than for men. Both of these trends are troubling.
7. Ideology plays a significant role in the education system. Over every level of education, the curriculum used to be based on the Ruhnama, a book on philosophy, history and ideology which was propagandistic in favor of then-President Niyazow. While President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow essentially got rid of this book, he simply replaced it with his own writings. Thus, ideology plays a large part in Turkmenistan’s education system.
8. While Turkmenistan spends a lot on education relative to its overall spending, this does not amount to a large portion of its GDP. Turkmenistan puts 20.4% of its total public spending toward education, which is well above the global average of 13.95%, though this amount of spending only represents 2.75% of Turkmenistan’s GDP (well below the global average of 4.4%). Thus, while education may be among Turkmenistan’s priorities, the country is not able to dedicate as significant a quantity of money (relative to its GDP) towards education as other countries are.

Looking Ahead

These eight facts about education in Turkmenistan reveal that education in Turkmenistan has its strengths and weaknesses. Though literacy rates are quite high among youth, the higher education system struggles to accommodate students, and there exists bribery and ideology within the system. Thus, there is still a clear potential for improvement within Turkmenistan’s education system.

– Olivia Heale, Jackson Mayer
Photo: Flickr