Turkmenistan

The organization of Turkmen education does not include the concept of "secondary school" but is organized around a single nine year unit as discussed in the previous section on primary education. Workers under thirty years of age who have completed a secondary general education accounted for 66.4 percent of Turkmenistan's workforce in 1989; those with middle specialized education, 16.0 percent; those with an incomplete higher education, 1.6 percent; and those with a complete higher education, 8.7 percent.

The curriculum followed by schools is standardized, allowing little variation among the country's school districts. The prescribed humanities curriculum for the ninth and tenth grades places the heaviest emphasis on native language and literature, history, physics, mathematics, Turkmen or Russian language, chemistry, foreign language, world cultures, and physical education. A few elective subjects are available.