Proceeding from this, the education was proclaimed as a priority of state policy of the Republic of Uzbekistan. The indicator of literacy level in the country remains one of the highest in the world – 99.34%. Uzbekistan is rightly named to be the country of youth.

At the moment, the large-scale work in the framework of the State national program on development the school education is underway. The Program was adopted as a logical continuation of National program on cadres training.

The address by the President of Uzbekistan Islam Karimov “Ensuring the priority of human interests – the main goal of all reforms and transformations” at the session of Cabinet of Ministries dedicated to the outcomes of social and economic development of the country in 2007 and the most important priorities of further deepening the reforms in 2008 has reflected all this work.

As it was underscored in the address, truly enormous amount of work both on its scale and essence to establish the contemporary material, technical and academic basis of educational institutions has been accomplished in the framework of implementation of national programs.

The repair and construction works have been accomplished at 4669 general education schools. 205 new schools were built. 1174 schools have been reconstructed. 2074 schools have been overhauled. 1216 schools have been repaired. All this work was accomplished in line with the efforts to cardinally renew and overhaul the facilities as well as engineering and communication infrastructure of general education schools in the framework of the State national Program for developing the school education in 2004-2007.

It is noteworthy to emphasize the very fact that newly built 3768 schools are located in the rural area, 781 – in cities and 120 - in the remote areas of Uzbekistan. This has addressed the difference between the urban and rural schools.

In 2007 alone according to the resolution of Cabinet of Ministries of the Republic of Uzbekistan No.493 of October 21, 2004, on the basis of state order to equip the 1956 general education schools with furniture, teaching laboratory tools, computers and sports inventories using the non-budget funds the School education fund has spent 101.7 billion soums. In line with the outcomes of equipping the general educational schools with school equipments in 2007, the chemistry classes were provided with necessary inventories by 37.4% to 42.5%, physics classes – by 39% to 61%, biology classes - by 37% to 42%. This serves as one of the achievements in the sphere of education.

In brief:

- according to the State national Program the material technical bases of 638 schools in 2004, 1099 – in 2005, 1326 - in 2006, and 1608 – in 2007 were renewed based on modern requirements;

-provision of pupils at general education schools of Uzbekistan with textbooks and teaching aids accounted for 82.3% in 2004, 92.1% - in 2006, and 98.6% - in 2007;

- during 2004-2007 the salary of teachers increased to 6.2 times.

- thanks to raising the pace of renewing the content of education the periodicity of raising the qualification of pedagogues decreased from 5 to 3 years ;

-in 2007 – 2008 school year 445289 pedagogues are working in the general education schools nationwide;

- 715 sports facilities were commissioned in 2003-2007. Most of them were established in rural areas where 583 (82%) sports facilities were built.