Start of School Year Heralds New Era in Turkmenistan

nCa Report

Ashgabat, 2 September 2007 (nCa) --- About 100000 little citizens of Turkmenistan, the girls with broad ribbons in their braids and the boys with their shiny wristwatches, entered Saturday morning the school gates for the first time in their young lives. It was not only the start of a new school year in Turkmenistan but the beginning of an exciting era with panorama of possibilities, promises and challenge.

The proverbial red carpet was laid out for the little ones and rose petals were showered on them as they entered the school system, staring at everything with wide-eyed innocence. Some of them were dragging their feet with apprehension.

Turkmenistan has embarked on complete restructuring of its educational system and it was evident right from the beginning. The first day of the school year – the first bell – used to be a symbolic start of teaching. Children were sent home after a customary lecture. This year it was different. The students, even the very young ones, had a full day of schooling. The message was clear: There is no time to waste.

All the children in Turkmenistan who entered the first grade this year got a school bag full of accessories and goodies as a gift from the government.

With the addition of 100000 new entrants to the KG and first grade, the total number of children in all the 1709 schools of Turkmenistan has crossed the one million mark. Fully 20% population of the country is composed of school going children. Add to this number the tiny tots who are still too young to go to school and the students in the institutions of higher learning, and you are talking of 45% of population that is has still not entered practical life in Turkmenistan. It is truly a young country.

A day before the start of the school year, President Berdymuhamedov sent a message of greetings to the students and teachers of Turkmenistan. Instead of he usual ‘You are fine, I am fine, We are great,’ it was a concise summary of what Turkmenistan has done during the past 8 months to reform the educational system and what it intends doing in near future.

Here are some of the things Turkmenistan has done recently to reform its educational system:

• School education has been upgraded from 9 to 10 years
• University education has increased from 4 to 5 years and the restriction of 2 years work experience has been dropped for university entrance
• 74 new textbooks and manuals have been introduced in the school syllabus
• Salaries of all the teachers in Turkmenistan have been increased by 40% starting from 1 September 2007
• Stipend of all students has been raised by 40% starting from 1 September 2007
• The government has ordered 12000 HP, dual processor Pentium 4 computers with 1GB RAM, 160 GB HD, 19 inch LCD monitor, loaded with Windows Vista and anti virus upgrade for two years. The computers, the come with combo printer-scanners and LAN, would be distributed to schools across Turkmenistan
• 1200 teachers will get special training in computers
• New curriculum is being built around the multimedia interactive technologies
• Children in remote villages are being provided special access to Internet to bridge the gap between rural and urban students
• More than 300 students have left for higher education abroad this year
• Syllabus is being rehashed with the aim of getting the Turkmen diplomas recognized all over the world
• Teachers’ work load has been reduced to 24 hours a week
• Number of students per class has been restricted to no more than 25
• By the time the children leave the school system, they should be able to speak at least three languages
• All provincial centres would soon get model school with capacity for 600 students and kindergarten for 160 kids
• Academy for law enforcement agencies opened Saturday in Ashgabat
• Two specialized schools, one giving option to major in chemistry and biology and the other with stress on foreign languages, opened Saturday in Ashgabat.
• 35 new schools and 25 kindergartens are under construction in Ashgabat of which 8 schools and 7 kindergartens will come into service this year
• Large number were sent for study tours to UK, China, Spain, France, Russia, Belarus, Germany, India and Israel
• New disciplines have been introduced in the institutions of higher learning. These include journalism, Japanese language, production of vegetable oil, rural economy, bookkeeping and audit for agriculture, and four courses related to civil aviation

Some people tend to describe these as baby steps. If they are baby steps, they are baby steps of a growing giant. There is no other country in the recent history that has been able to do so much for its educational system in the tight span of 8 months.

Education is in the genes of the descendants of Seljuks. As the little children walked to schools Saturday morning, they were opening and closing their school bags again and again. They were least bothered whether their necktie was askew or the ribbon in the braid was asymmetrical. The only thing on their young minds was the school bag with its treasures of joy and ecstasy – the smell of a new textbook, the texture of a perfectly round crayon stick, the Plasticine you would mold into thousands of shapes, the small compass with its needle always pointing to north, the yellow rabbit that has pencil sharpener on one end and eraser on the other, the ruler that is for drawing straight lines during the class and doubles as sword during the break.

Probably you don’t get any richer than that.