The shortage of places in pre-school facilities forces parents to use various corrupt schemes in order to get a cherished place in kindergarten.
Sabina L. (all names changed) from Tashkent put her son on the online kindergarten waiting list when he was one and a half years old. Now her child is 4.5 years old, but he is not yet on the waiting list for the kindergarten of his choice.
“I knew that when the child turned three, it would be necessary to go to work. That’s why I put my son on the waiting list for kindergarten in advance. He’s already 4.5 years old, but we still haven’t received our permit. I’m offered to choose another kindergarten, as this one is overcrowded, but I need exactly this institution,” she said.
The problem with getting a child into kindergarten is not new in Uzbekistan. Difficulties with enrollment in pre-school education have existed for many years. Until 2018, it was only possible to place a child in a preschool institution according to the place of registration of parents. More often than not, preschools were overcrowded, but it was always possible to place a child in any other preschool for a fee.
Since 2018, Uzbekistan has introduced an online system for placing a child in a kindergarten through a single portal of interactive state services (EPISU). This system was supposed, among other things, to eradicate corruption. But in practice this has not happened.
CABAR.asia spoke with some parents who have tried to enroll their children in kindergartens in Tashkent, and they agreed to speak about the situation on the right of anonymity.
“Online enrollment is a lottery. Today, through this portal you can put your child on the waiting list for three kindergartens at once. In some cases, you can get a ticket almost immediately, within a week, but in others you have to wait for years,” said one of the young mothers, who introduced herself as Malyuda.
It seems that the introduction of the online system has not solved the problem of corruption as planned.
“Now parents go directly to the director of the institution, if necessary, ‘negotiate’ with him and take the child unofficially. If a commission is waiting in the institution, moms and dads are warned not to bring their child on that day,” Hanifa, another parent from Tashkent, told CABAR.asia.
“At the same time, now there is always an option to give the baby to a private kindergarten. But can a person on a salary of three million Uzbek sums (about US $300) afford to pay 2.5 million (about US $250) for a kindergarten?” she said.
While the pre-school enrollment rate for children ages 3-7 is 69.4 percent, according to official data from the Ministry of Preschool Education, and the enrollment rate for children ages 6 has reached 84 percent, the country’s annual population growth rate is just over half a million, which makes it problematic to reach all children with pre-school education.
That’s not to say that the Uzbek authorities aren’t trying to solve the problem of a shortage of kindergartens. In 2019, the country adopted a Concept for the Development of Preschool Education in the Republic of Uzbekistan until 2030, which includes “creating conditions for the comprehensive intellectual, moral, aesthetic, and physical development of preschool children,” as well as “ensuring equal access for children to quality preschool education” and other measures aimed at developing preschool education.
Private kindergartens do not solve the problem
Private kindergartens play an important role in the implementation of this Concept. Now, according to official data, they account for 31% of children in the kindergarten system. In 2018-2021 alone, 20,643 nonpublic kindergartens opened in Uzbekistan.
“Today we notice the state’s confidence in the private sector in this matter. For the convenience of parents, the legislation allowed private kindergartens to accept children from an early age (from 1 to 3 years). Now the issue of allocating [state] subsidies to finance the education of children in private kindergartens is being discussed,” said Shokhzhakhon Akmalzhon ugli Khujaev, head of the Intellectual Property Law Department at Tashkent Law University and PhD in Law.
In any case, private kindergartens should not be considered as a complete substitute for state preschool institutions. Since not all families can afford them.
The average monthly cost of a private kindergarten is 2-3 million soums (approximately 200-300 USD). At the same time in 2022 the average salary in the whole country, according to the State Tax Committee, is 2.78 million soums ($250.18).
Staff shortages and low salaries for teachers
Another acute problem in kindergartens is staff recruitment. Preschool staff salaries in the country are considered to be among the lowest.
Today, monthly salaries for teachers in public kindergartens range from $138 to $245, depending on what age group the teacher works with and what qualifications they have.
Parents believe that teachers’ salaries, given that working in kindergarten requires maximum dedication, are not much at all. Especially since most state kindergartens have 40 children in each group.
Today, the Ministry of Preschool Education has developed a proposal to increase the salaries of kindergarten teaching staff in two stages. This process takes time, and the shortage of competent staff is already negatively affecting children today.
Meanwhile, parents also told that in public kindergartens the monthly payment is 250 thousand soums ($22.5). However, these kindergartens usually have additional paid classes (English language, sports, chess, mental arithmetic, etc.), which cost them another 250 thousand soums. Besides, parents often collect another 50,000-100,000 soums (US$5-10) from each child for various group levies.
Meanwhile, any collection in Uzbekistan is forbidden. But in practice they exist to this day. On condition of anonymity, a parent described how the fees are collected.
“Today nobody forcibly forces you to give money. However, since educators are forbidden to do this, usually parent chats are created separately, where a member of the parent committee voices what is missing in the group. Usually these are soap products, curtains, dishes, cooler, extra money for a babysitter, watchman, etc. So, I can’t say that public kindergartens are cheap, especially if you have two or three children,” she said.