Before the peaceful liberation of Tibet in 1951, there was no school system in the modern sense. The rate of enrollment of school-age children was less than 2 percent, and the illiteracy rate was as high as 95 percent. Since then, Tibet has built a large number of modern schools and implemented a modern education system. Today, Tibet's education system has fundamentally taken shape and consists of pre-school, compulsory, secondary, higher, vocational, continuing, and special education.

In 2010, all counties in Tibet achieved nine-year compulsory education. The illiteracy rate of young and middle-aged adults fell from 39 percent in 2000 to 1.2 percent in 2010. The per capita years of education rate increased from 4.74 years of education in 2000 to 7.3 years in 2010.

From the beginning, modern education in Tibet has adhered to bilingual (Tibetan and Chinese) education. In terms of curriculum, Tibet's colleges and universities have added Tibetan traditional culture and art, Tibetan medicine, and other disciplines and majors in addition to Tibetan language and literature. Besides, basic public classes in Tibetan language have also opened.