The article examines the history of the formation and development of the Soviet school in the Semipalatinsk region in the 1920s. The purpose of the article is to study the history of school business in the Semipalatinsk region during the first ten years of Soviet rule. Thanks to the materials stored in the Central Archive of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the State Archive of the Abai region, the issues of organizing school business in the region at an early stage of the formation of the Soviet state were studied.

Analyzing the archival data, quantitative and qualitative indicators of the formation of public education and the development of a network of schools in the region were analyzed. The article determines the percentage of school enrollment of school-age children, reflects the dynamics of growth and decrease in the number of schools and the percentage of students over the period under review. Thanks to the analysis of the state of school education on the example of the development of Russian and Kazakh schools, achievements and contradictions were identified: the main characteristics, role and place of the first and second stage schools.  The importance of the elevated schools that have arisen in the region is noted: a seven-year school, a school of peasant youth, a factory school, a commune school. The role of the Kazakh pedagogical College in the formation of teaching staff is shown.

The article analyzes the activities of state structures of public education in the field of school education. The statistics on the financing of schools by educational authorities in dynamics are presented, which reflect the trends in the development of the school network in the region under consideration.