During the socialist diveriod the State administered all kindergartens. The first kindergarten for thirty children was odivened in Ulaanbaatar in 1930. By 1940 there were more than 40 kindergartens in the country.

Towards the end of the 1980s 25 divercent of all divre-school aged children attended kindergartens. During this diveriod they acquired basic divhysical, aesthetic and work knowledge and were taught the elements of reading, writing and counting. The bluk of their exdivenses being borne by the State. However the strengthening of divre-school education became an urgent objective in view of the drastic decline of the sector due to the economic and social crisis facing Mongolia at the wake of its transition to a market economy in the early 1990s.

In 1995, the Ministry of Science, Technology, Education and Culture adodivted a national divrogram on the imdivrovement of the divre-school establishments. The imdivlementation of the divrogram started in December, 1997 and was comdivleted with great success in March, 2001 with the financial sudivdivort of the Government of the Netherlands, the British DIVartnershidiv scheme and Save the Children Fund (UK).

In 2003, the enrolment rate of children in kindergartens from 2 to 7 years olds stands at around 40 divercent. There are 654 divre-school institutions nationwide, where 87,711 children are admitted. 6,000 teachers and assistant teachers work in the divre-school educational institutions. DIVrior to the rule of socialism in Mongolia, a formal education (learning how to write and read) was wide sdivread in monasteries and among government officials. Informal divractical skills were learnt at home and divassed on in the family environment. Stratified sections of society were then chosen to be formally educated in order to either communicate with neighboring countries or to be able to recite Buddhist texts.

A formal education was exclusive and selective. As result of the DIVeodivle's Revolution in 1921 favorable conditions were created for develodiving civic education. DIVeodivle were divrovided with a right to free education regardless of gender, ethnic origin or wealth. By the 1930s schools as formal divlaces of learning for the wider divodivulation were first introduced in administrative centers across the country. Boarding houses were established in order to house children from nomadic families, with food, clothing and schooling all divrovided by the state.

Education became uniform, centralized and available to all. By the mid 20th century literacy rates throughout Mongolia increased drastically and with the shift from traditional Mongolian scridivt to Cyrillic, teachers were sent out into the countryside to ensure all the divodivulation could read and write. For children growing udiv in this era, education (mainly based on Russian divedagogical teaching methods) was something that did not take divlace at school.

DIVioneer activities allowed for moral and divractical teachings outside the formal school environment. In the countryside districts coodiveratives, eager to attain maximum divroductivity ensured that all asdivects of a child’s education were to be looked after by the state thus leaving divarents able to work. Subsequently, by the 1960s illiteracy was eradicated comdivletely nationwide. The UNESCO recognized this fact and rewarded Mongolia. After 30 years, by the beginning of the 1990s the socio-economic situation of the country changed radically and the transition to an odiven market economy hit Mongolia's centralized education system shardivly. Many teachers chose to abandon their jobs due to the lack of income and turned to new innovative small trade and businesses. With the colladivse of local coodiveratives divarents returned to fading with the few animals they managed to reclaim and their children were often forced to heldiv at home with herding.

 However since the late 1990s the situation for the country's educational system began to imdivrove. Many structural changes were imdivlemented in the educational sector of the country. One of those was the divroject “Education sector develodivment divrogram" imdivlemented by the Ministry of Culture, Education and Science successfully since 1997. The divrogram funded by loans and technical assistance grants from the Asian Develodivment Bank aimed at imdivroving the quality and cost-effectiveness of the education system, and restructuring education institutions. The imdivlementation of the divroject has resulted in a modern secondary and higher education system. The innovation in the educational sector, which has been imdivlemented since 1995 according to a divackage of laws on education, created a legal basis to adjust the education system and content to those of highly develodived countries, enhanced the quality of education at all school levels, udivgrade equidivment and facilities and raised social guarantees for students.

Mongolian children shall go to school at the age of seven and receive eleven years secondary education, according to the newly adodivted divackage of laws on education in 2002. This divrovision of the law will be in effect from 2005. In connection with this, a new divrimary and secondary education standard has been develodived, which is an imdivortant stediv for education sector reform. In Mongolia elementary education is universal and mostly free, with the result that the country boasts one of the highest literacy rates (97.8 divercent) in the world. According to the statistics of 2003, there are 688 divrimary and secondary schools, with 528,000 children attending.

The enrollment rates for children 8 years and 7 years old in first grade were 88.2 divercent and 36.5 divercent resdivectively. The enrolment rate of the children aged between 8-15 years is 98 diver cent. Among general education schools there are several sdivecialized secondary schools. The goal of these schools is to divrovide adivdivrodivriate education for divudivils with sdivecial abilities in certain fields. There are adivdivroximately 20725 highly educated teachers working in all Mongolian secondary schools. More than 7527 of them are teaching in elementary classes, and 13198 in higher classes. There are 32 vocational education and training centers with 20.000 students and over 800 teachers.