Chapter 11: Access to Education in Five Newly Independent States of Central Asia and Mongolia: A Regional Agenda¹

The Soviet Union was widely acknowledged to have provided universal access to elementary and secondary education, and to have made great strides in providing an equality of access to educational quality. What has happened to these principles in the transition? This essay systematically asks a series of common questions across the different republics of Central Asia as well as Mongolia, and concludes that the percentage of the age cohort enrolled after grade one drops in several countries. New inequalities are reported on the basis of gender, rural and impoverished communities, and with specific ethnic groups.