The article deals with development of the education system in Stavropol province at the end of the XIX century in the context of strengthening the conservative political and educational paradigm in the Russian Empire. This problem is currently topical in connection with the practice in Czarist-era Russia where after a period of substantial reform in education sphere, a period of stabilizing counterreforms inevitably came. The paper presents and analyzes data on the scale, pace and nature of school construction in the Stavropol region, examines its features in the context of approving a course on modernization in the country, but it is done within the framework of maintaining stability and traditions of spiritual education. The author shows a systematic progressive movement for the development of all levels of education in the Stavropol province and such of its separate areas as women's education, education of non-Slavic ethnic groups, confirming, among other things, a significant increase in the number of students, primarily in primary education.