A/HRC/46/57/Add.1 31. While Kyrgyzstan prescribes mandatory learning of the State language, Kyrgyz, school manuals and textbooks are supposed to be available in four languages: Kyrgyz, Russian, Uzbek and Tajik. 32. According to information from the Ministry of Education and Science, there are a total of 1,222,661 students in 2,262 educational institutions for primary, basic secondary and upper secondary education. Of these institutions, 462 are located in urban areas and 1,796 are in rural areas; 2,148 of them are public, while 114 are private. 33. Four languages (Kyrgyz, Russian, Uzbek, Tajik) can be officially used as a medium of instruction in 1,689 public schools, three of which are minority languages – Russian is the language of instruction in 226 schools, Uzbek in 33 and Tajik in 3. Longitudinal data covering the school years from 2013/14 to 2017/18 show a dramatic decrease in the number of schools where Uzbek is a medium of instruction (from 65 to 33), whereas the number of schools where Russian is a language of instruction has increased, and Tajik-language schools remain the same throughout the reporting period. It is noteworthy that despite the Uzbekspeaking community being the second-largest in the country, with more members than the Russian-speaking community, the Uzbek language is significantly, and increasingly, underrepresented in education. A number of private schools also teach mainly in English. 34. With regard to secondary vocational education, of the total of 91,877 students in 145 institutions for the 2017/18 school year, 79,155 students were ethnic Kyrgyz. There were 1,390 preschool institutions, with a total of 187,078 children, of whom 99,678 were being taught in Kyrgyz, 86,511 in Russian, 878 in Uzbek and 11 in other languages. 35. One of the key priority policy areas of the Government’s Educational Development Strategy 2012–2020 is the development of multicultural and multilingual education in which students are taught in more than two languages. According to the government data, multilingual education is provided in more than 80 schools all over Kyrgyzstan, as well as in 60 kindergartens and 5 higher education institutions. There are also pilot programmes for multilingual education, which are supported by international organizations such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. It appears that English, Russian and Kyrgyz are used in many of these pilot programmes, but seldom if ever other minority languages. 36. Although the Constitution, in its article 10, recognizes that ethnic minorities form part of the population of Kyrgyzstan, and that they have the right to preserve their native language as well as to create conditions for its learning and development, in practice minorities appear to face significant challenges in accessing quality education in their mother tongue. The State language, Kyrgyz, and the official Russian language have progressively replaced minority languages in public education (there is no vocational or university education in a minority language, other than a few courses limited to the study of non-Russian minority languages). Before the violence in 2010, there were two Kyrgyz universities that offered courses in Uzbek, namely the Kyrgyz-Uzbek University in Osh and the People’s Friendship University in Jalalabad. The first was renamed Osh State Social University and offers courses in Kyrgyz and Russian only, whereas the second has shut down. On a number of occasions, the Special Rapporteur was informed this was perceived as a process of “Kyrgyzization” of the educational system, to the detriment of minority languages and cultures. 37. The number of public schools that teach in a minority language other than Russian has significantly decreased in recent years, either due to the absence of funding and of qualified teaching staff for minority languages, or to the fact that some of these schools changed their language of instruction to Kyrgyz, the State language, or in a few cases to the official Russian language. In addition, some parents from the minority communities appear to opt to send their children to Kyrgyz- and Russian-language schools to secure their continued education, since universities only teach in Kyrgyz or Russian, and to increase their chances for employment after graduation since Kyrgyz public authorities provide few or no public services in minority languages, and hence do not provide employment opportunities for individuals fluent in minority languages, such as Uzbek. 38. There is no education in a number of minority languages, mainly due to the lack of government support and the absence of trained teaching staff and of educational materials and textbooks. 7