Ashgabat - Post Report Question and Answers
What is the availability of international schools? What has been your general experience with them, if any?
There is an international school right next door to the embassy compound that people seem to like. Those with younger children who speak some amount of Russian have good things to say about local preschool/kindergartens. - Jan 2024
No personal experience, but most liked the elementary. - Dec 2020
There is only one school K-12 and i have only heard positive comments. It has a small teacher/student ratio. They will move to a new building in the fall of 2018. - Jun 2018
There is only 1 small international school. Our experience with them has been good (our child was only in pre-K though). I also worked for them and the employment experience was also good. - Feb 2016
The Ashgabat International School (AIS) is really the only game in town unless you work for a specific French construction firm (Bouygues) which has its own school or speak Russian and can gain entrance into the Pushkin school, which has ties to the Russian government through an inter governmental agreement with the Turkmen. AIS, which is located immediately adjacent to the U.S. residential compound, has roughly 200 students (pre-K through 12th grade) from 20 nations. A QSI school offering an IB education, it is run and staffed by Americans and Brits. Turkmen make up roughly one-third of the student body, with American and Malaysian students the largest expat cohort. Our experience was that the school did well by its students, with excellent primary-level instruction, smaller classroom sizes and in several instances more personalized attention which allowed students the flexibility to move up into older classes as determined by their abilities. Many Americans and at least one European family chose to send their high school aged children to boarding schools in Europe to better prepare them educationally for entrance into U.S. colleges and universities. The school is expanding its extra curricular and AP offerings to meet the demands of its student body. The 2014 graduating class totaled 3 students. AIS will soon break ground on a new campus, a project that should take a couple of years. Once completed, the school will be able to double its size, though it is doubtful in the short term that there will be enough expat students to fill the chairs. - Jul 2014
We did not have any children in school at the time. - Oct 2012
This is the school with a can do attitude. I specifically chose Ashgabat because of the small classroom sizes for high schoolers. My son has flourished with the individualized attention. I would say that his circle of friends is smaller than other posts, but they are great kids and in some ways the relationships are more meaningful. - Mar 2012
