Monasteries played a peculiar role in public education. Foreign schools were opened at the monasteries, where children of Khanty, Tatars and Russians studied.

One of the oldest was the church missionary school of the Kondinsky monastery. In 1870, 33 people (17 Russians, 6 foreigners) studied at the missionary school. In 1891−1909, 155 Russians and 151 Khanty people studied there.

In 1885, a foreign school was opened at the Abalaki Holy Sign Monastery. In 1892, the school was transferred to the Tobolsk Znamensky Monastery, and a Russian-Tatar four-grade school was left in Abalak. In 1892, 8 people (7 Khanty, 1 Nenets) studied at the foreign school of the Tobolsk Znamensky Monastery, in 1893 — 17 (13 Khanty, 1 Russian). In 1893, there were 33 students at the Abalak school (23 Russians, 10 Tatars).

In 1867, a girls' school was established at St. John’s Monastery. In February 1881, the school was transformed into the Tobolsk Diocesan Women’s School. A new building was purchased for the school on Bolshaya Ilyinskaya Street. The staff of the diocesan women’s college included 3 people with academic education: I.Y. Syrtsov (Russian history), I.A. Ornatov (physics), N.G. Griftsov (pedagogy). In addition, two seminary students taught: M.F. Lebedev (geography) and P.I. Novgorodsky (literature). The teaching of the Russian language and arithmetic was performed by two teachers, graduates of the Mariinsky Girls' School, L.E. Znamenskaya and L.E. Reschikova. The number of pupils was constantly growing. In 1867/66, there were only 11 girls enrolled, in 1883/84, 88 girls, and in 1907/08, 276 people. According to the existing rule, girls at least 10−12 years old were admitted to the school. There were preparatory classes for 8−10 year old girls. Upon graduation, at the age of 17−19, young girls served as teachers in parochial schools and literacy schools.

In 1884, a foreign school was opened in St. John’s Monastery. In 1892, 17 students studied there (9 were children of peasants, 8 were burghers). Two teachers worked at the school (priests Jonah Kopylov and Nikolai Ilyinsky) and two teachers (Blagochinskaya and Burelkova).

National schools of the North

The system of boarding schools for the indigenous peoples of the North of Western Siberia began to take shape in the 1920s, with the advent of Soviet power. In the 1920s and 30s, boarding schools were voluntary. Up until the 1950s, parents in remote areas of the tundra often hid their children, thereby hindering their education. The purposeful and sometimes violent collection of children in boarding schools began in the 1950s. Despite the drama of the situation, boarding schools have been integrated into the culture of the indigenous minorities of the Far North for several decades.

After the collapse of the Soviet education system in the 1990s, national occupations such as reindeer husbandry declined in many areas of the North. And then the regional intelligentsia began to say that boarding schools only contribute to the outflow of the indigenous population from the northern territories. The link between generations is being destroyed, children forget the language and culture of their ancestors, do not want to return to the tundra after a more comfortable life in the village — as a result, reindeer husbandry, and the culture associated with it, and national languages may sink into oblivion. Therefore, the return of children to the natural educational and cultural environment in order to realize the universal right to education has acquired a new scope.

Yamal boarding school

The history of the Yamal Boarding School, the largest in Russia in terms of the number of students, dates back more than seven decades. The school was opened in November 1932 at the Yamal Cultural Base. Initially, only six people studied here: parents were afraid to give their children into the wrong hands. However, the situation gradually changed. In 1966, the boarding school was headed by N.N. Pochekuev. A new building was built under him, in which more than one generation of Yarsali residents studied. In the late 1970s, the school had its own labor and recreation camp on the Repnino farm in the Volgograd region. In the early 1990s, thanks to the efforts of director N.P. Vallo, the first computer classroom was opened at the boarding school, and a school museum was created under the guidance of history teacher G.S. Zaitsev.

Currently, more than one thousand people study at the Yamal boarding school, half of them are children of tundra workers. The institution has a good material and technical base. Among the graduates of the Yamal Boarding School there are many well-known people in the district: candidate of Biological Sciences, scientist, author of more than 150 scientific publications and popular articles Sergey Petrovich Paskhalny, senior researcher at the Institute of Nuclear Reactors of the Russian Scientific Center "Kurchatov Institute" Nikolai Lvovich Chechulin, President of the Association of Indigenous Peoples of the North Yamal — to descendants!" Alexander Vadetovich Evai, Deputy Governor of the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous District, Director of the Department for Indigenous Peoples of the North Lidia Patievna Vallo, head of the Yamal district municipality Andrey Nikolaevich Kugaevsky.

Largely due to institutions such as the Yamal Boarding School, the number of representatives of indigenous peoples leading a nomadic lifestyle has remained unchanged in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous District over the past 20 years.

The education of the Siberian Tatars and Bukharans before the beginning of the twentieth century was purely Islamic.

Higher educational institutions — madrassas, appeared in Siberia in the middle of the XIX century. They were opened in cities and large settlements, where rich people could support them at their own expense. The teachers (mudarris) at the madrasah were mainly graduates of Central Asian, most often Bukhara madrasahs. The main curriculum was theology. There were few other academic disciplines, and they were of an auxiliary nature.

Mektebe — elementary schools that existed at almost every mosque. In 1851, there were 188 mosques in Western Siberia. In the village of Embaevo, Tyumen county, already in the first half of the XIX century there were several mektebs in which children of Siberian Tatars and Bukharians studied.

Usually, the local imam — mullah was listed as the teacher (mugallim) at the school, but the practical training was carried out by khalfa. An ordinary khalfa is an elderly person who has not studied at a madrasah and does not have a pedagogical education.

Imam and Khalfa did not receive any money. Parents paid for the education of children with grain, meat, butter, etc. The place was usually located in a small house purchased with public funds. The students studied while sitting on the floor.

The main textbook in Mekteb was the Koran. It was studied throughout the student’s entire period of study at school. The novice student was introduced to Arabic letters, and then the reading began. In the first year of study, the student had to learn one surah of the Koran — "Ya sin" ("Yasan") (36 surahs of the Koran, consists of 83 verses). In the second year of study, the student was asked to learn an incomplete list of the Koran, in the form of its seventh part, which is a separate book. — "Haft-u-yaq sharif" (Sacred Heftiyak). In the third and fourth years of his studies, he tried his hand at reading the entire Koran. The student was asked to be able to read the Koran fluently and memorize some of its chapters.

They also taught writing in mekteb. The written tasks were limited to rewriting books with religious content. Girls also attended mektebe, but they usually studied with the mullah’s wife (mullin, abystai), except that the girls did not practice writing.

Besides the imam, itinerant teachers taught in some villages. For example, a retired soldier taught Nerdin children in yurts. His parents paid him 30 kopecks per pupil. There were 50 boys and 30 girls in this school.

According to the First All-Russian Population Census of 1897, the literacy rate of the Siberian Tatars was higher than that of the Russian population. 25.4% of men were literate (against 17.5% among Russians), 16.8% among women (against 4.6%). However, this literacy was not in Russian, but in Arabic. Only 7% of literate Tatars wrote and read Russian.

On January 21, 1900, a basic agricultural school was opened in Sokolovka village, Bronnikovskaya parish, Tobolsk County. The founder of the school was Nikolai Lukich Skalozubov, an agronomist of the Tobolsk province. The school accepted boys aged 14−18 who had received training in public schools. The school had 203.65 acres of arable land, specially equipped classrooms and production workshops, meadows and pastures, etc.

The main purpose of the school was to introduce students who came from Ishim, Yalutorovsky, Turin and Tarsky counties of Tobolsk province, with competent farming. The training was designed for 4 years.

Students of the school studied general education subjects, special disciplines and practiced. The training was conducted by experienced agricultural specialists from N.L. Skalozubov, A.S. Agapov, N.I. Ventzer, N.V. Voitekhovsky, V.I. Kaigorodov. The teachers of the school conducted scientific research, the results of which were published in the collection "Proceedings of the basic agricultural school". The school also had a doctor, a paramedic, an educator, a manager, a law teacher, a clerk, an oil craftsman, a carpenter, an economist, a gardener, a groom, a coachman, a water carrier, a forester, a watchman, a cook in a dormitory, a seamstress, a laundress, a milkmaid and a forester.

For many years, the school has been training specialists for agriculture and maintaining contact with the peasants. In November 1915, the agricultural school was renamed the Basic Agricultural School.

The most important condition for the formation of literacy of the population is the availability of accessible and socially demanded types of educational institutions and, as a result, a developed education system.

In the second half of the XIX — early XX centuries, there were various types of educational institutions: parochial schools, foreign schools, gymnasiums, county schools, diocesan schools, a theological seminary and private schools. They were under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Public Education, the Holy Synod, and belonged to private individuals.

Parochial schools were the main type of educational institutions in the Tobolsk province during the period under study. According to N.M. Yadrintsev, in 1879 in the Tobolsk province there were 272 educational institutions with 8,315 students, of which 199 parochial schools, in which 4,424 people studied. In terms of the number of educational institutions and the number of students, the Tobolsk province at that time surpassed the rest of the provinces of Siberia. For example, in Tomsk province there were 185 educational institutions with 6,611 students.

The duties of the priests, as their leaders, included taking care of finding funds to support the existence of the school, extracurricular work with students on religious and moral education. The priests were teachers of the law of God, in addition, "the teacher was usually an ordinary sexton, an old maid (a century-old woman or a blueberry), a village cell attendant or a retired soldier."

In 1913, there were 445 parish schools in the Tobolsk province, in which 20,856 students studied. In addition, there were 23 literacy schools in the counties (585 students).