The Finance Inquirer referring to the results of the international study by the Research Group Central Asia (RGCA) and data from UNICEF, the World Bank and the OECD, has published a ranking of top 10 countries with the best dynamics of enrollment of children in preschool education.  Tajikistan ranks 2nd while Uzbekistan is on the top the global ranking.

The report includes an overview of long-term trends in preschool education covering the period from 2018 to 2020.  According to the data presented in the article, the situation with preschool education in majority of the regions of the world is either stagnating or encountered recession, while a number of countries are characterized by impressive growth.  The most striking example is Uzbekistan, where the dynamics of growth of enrollment of children aged 3 to 6 years with preschool education totaled 59% in report period.

Commenting on the results of the study, RGCA CEO Vyacheslav Karpov noted: “Against the backdrop of alarming global trends in 2020, when leading countries showed a double-digit drop in the coverage with preschool education, a number of countries, on the contrary, were characterized by impressive growth.  World ranking leader Uzbekistan, for example, increased this figure by 59% due to increased public spending, liberalization of the sector and the introduction of innovative mobile kindergartens for hard-to-reach settlements.  It is obvious that the data in one way or another correlate with the successful passage of the acute stage of the pandemic in the spring-summer of 2020: a number of countries used lockdowns to modernize and re-equip preschool educational institutions, while others redirected budget flows in other directions.  At the same time, the demarcation line does not pass at all according to the criterion of membership in the OECD: the same Finland again confirmed the stability of its famous educational system, adding 7%.”

Majority of the countries included in the RGCA study invest heavily in preschool education programs, with program costs subsidized by government funding – on average, totaling around 69% of overall spendings on preschool institutions. In addition to Tajikistan (+33%), Uzbekistan (+59%), Belarus (+7%), Finland (+7%), Kazakhstan (+4%), Lithuania (+4%), Turkiye (+4%), Switzerland (+2%), Poland (+2%) and Azerbaijan (+1%) entered top the top ten countries.  More than half of the countries presented in the ranking faced decrease in the enrollment of children in preschool education in 2018-2020.