Smart School — Tashkent's AI Attendance-Monitoring Cameras (Uzbekistan)

Uzbekistan's Ministry of Preschool and School Education began piloting AI-powered facial-recognition cameras in Tashkent schools to monitor student attendance, following an August 29, 2025 decree from the Tashkent City Khokimiyat (mayor's office) establishing the 'Smart School' ('Aqlli maktab') program. The stated goal is to automate attendance verification as a supplement to teacher-recorded attendance in the existing e-maktab digital platform, tied to a graduated fine schedule for unexcused absences (roughly 412,000–2.06 million UZS for a first violation, doubling for repeats). The scheme traces back to a 2021 Ministry proposal for Face ID-based attendance and youth-monitoring cameras, developed jointly with the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

As of May 2026, the cameras remain in a limited pilot in schools of Tashkent's Mirzo-Ulugbek district, well short of the 250 classrooms across 31 Almazar-district schools originally floated for the 2025–26 rollout. No accuracy, attendance-improvement, or dropout-reduction data has been published for the pilot. Public reaction, reported by multiple Uzbek outlets, has been largely critical: parents and commentators raised the absence of a transparent consent process or clear rules on data storage and access for biometric data collected from minors, alongside broader distrust following prior data breaches in the country. A related controversy — an undisclosed surveillance camera found in a school locker room, officially justified as a theft-prevention measure and later removed after public outcry — has reinforced concerns about weak governance around school surveillance infrastructure more broadly.

The Ministry itself describes the cameras as a supplementary 'support tool' rather than a validated replacement for human attendance-taking, and no independent evaluation of the system exists. This practice is included as a documented cautionary case: a real, multi-source-verified example of an AI system deployed in a school setting with minimal transparency, no outcome evidence, and significant unresolved governance and consent gaps.

Read the full analysis: https://www.gazeta.uz/ru/2026/05/05/cameras/