The president framed the package as the next decade's programme after a first one he measured in places and certificates. Over ten years, he said, kindergartens for 1.8 million children and schools for 1.5 million pupils have been built, more than 10,000 institutions modernised and the number of teachers holding international or national certificates raised from 29,000 to 143,000 in five years. The pay line is the one that teachers will quote back: 40,000 of them earn $1,000 a month and 1,500 earn above $2,000, the president said, and a new state award named after Abdulla Avloni will be presented for the first time on next year's Teachers' Day.
This year 324 textbooks were rewritten with more than 400 specialists, Uzbek pupils won 228 medals at international olympiads and 15-year-olds climbed 32 places to 48th in the PISA science ranking.
The pay line is the one that teachers will quote back: 40,000 of them earn $1,000 a month and 1,500 earn above $2,000, the president said, and a new state award named after Abdulla Avloni will be presented for the first time on next year's Teachers' Day.
Inside the schools the measures target class size and the teachers who hold certificates. Classes of more than 25 pupils will be split in two for mathematics, physics, chemistry and biology. Nationally certified teachers get a 50% bonus, and the staff of the 100 schools that switch mathematics, informatics and natural sciences to English next year get 100%.
Compulsory monthly retraining gives way to vouchers for courses of 18 to 72 hours. Schools that score high on a new quality index and help weaker ones earn a 30% bonus.
The private sector is asked to take the overflow. In 52 districts where the state system is overloaded, founders of private schools get preferential credit and subsidies, vacant state buildings on a free ten-year lease and half the cost of international accreditation. Parents with children in private schools will see their tax-free income threshold doubled.
Inclusive schools have grown almost fivefold in two years to 3,591. From 1 January families with children aged two and three in family-based childcare will be reimbursed from the budget.
Higher education gets the biggest number. The country now has 1.6 million students, seven universities in international subject rankings and a target of 300 branch campuses of leading foreign universities, which will be offered subsidies for laboratories, equipment and brand licensing in engineering, agriculture, water, energy, artificial intelligence and medicine. Dual education, in which students work and study, reaches 75 universities next year and all of them from 2028, with the state covering half the wages of employed students.
In vocational colleges, 104 run international programmes with 25,000 enterprise partners, and certified masters get a 50% bonus from next year. The speech carries no price tag: the 2027 budget, still to reach its first reading, will show how much of this is funded and how much is the familiar Tashkent method of setting the target first and finding the money in the decrees that follow.