Education in Kazakhstan

Sidiqa AllahMorad, Data Evaluation Supervisor, WES, Chris Mackie, Editor, WENR

Kazakhstan is a rustic in transition. Since 1991, when it turned the final of the previous Soviet republics to declare independence, its leaders have sought to rework the nation’s financial system, launch it from the grip of central planners, and open it to market forces. Kazakhstan’s leaders have additionally sought to comparable transformations elsewhere, at the very least nominally. Authorities officers have proclaimed a want to decentralize political energy, to reverse a long time of worldwide isolation, and to unify an impartial, autonomous nation that for greater than half a century had been tightly built-in into the Soviet Union.

However, because the size of that still-incomplete transition suggests, their success has been blended. At occasions, continuity has held the higher hand over change, and lasting imprints of the nation’s Soviet previous nonetheless mark the land and its folks. Regardless of bold restoration efforts, the Aral Sea, as soon as the world’s fourth-largest lake, has shrunk to a ten^th of its earlier dimension after a long time of Soviet riverine diversions for irrigation and hydropower initiatives. Russian, the language of politics, commerce, and schooling within the Soviet Union, additionally stays essentially the most broadly spoken language in Kazakhstan, though reform efforts geared toward selling the Kazakh language have achieved appreciable success.

This transition has not spared Kazakhstan’s schooling system. Since independence, the federal government has embraced instructional reforms geared toward opening schooling provision to the free market, decentralizing administrative oversight and accountability, integrating the schooling system extra carefully with the worldwide neighborhood, and leveraging schooling to unify the nation. In recent times, given the nation’s financial and political ambitions, the push to rework the schooling system has solely intensified.

However, as in different sectors, progress has been removed from regular. In a syncopated collection of advances and retreats, authorities officers have introduced bold reforms, solely to shortly stroll them again. The idea for these reforms, in addition to that of a lot else in modern Kazakhstan, can finally be discovered within the turmoil of the nation’s instant post-independence social, political, and financial expertise.

Publish-Independence: A Decade of Change and Continuity

The dissolution of the Soviet Union despatched shockwaves by means of each nook of Kazakhstani society, triggering outbreaks of long-forgotten illnesses, fears of violent political unrest, and a mass exodus of ethnic minorities. The nation’s financial system was hit significantly arduous. A constituent republic of the Soviet Union since 1920, the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic (Kazakh SSR), because it was identified from 1936 to 1991, was of all the previous Soviet republics one of the vital carefully tied to the metropole. Its financial system had lengthy relied on the seamless transportation of pure assets pulled from its wealthy soils and brought to different Soviet republics for processing.

As these now post-Soviet states launched new tariffs and customs, disrupting the nation’s long-established provide chains, Kazakhstan’s financial system crashed. Between 1990 and 1995 the nation’s gross home product (GDP) fell by 31 %.¹ Hyperinflation ran rampant, reaching almost 3,000 % in 1992, as the federal government lifted value controls and expanded the cash provide to cowl giant finances deficits. Development remained sluggish till 1999, hindered because it was by low oil costs and a extreme financial decline in Russia, nonetheless Kazakhstan’s largest buying and selling associate, culminating within the 1998 Russian monetary disaster.

The dissolution additionally induced immense social dislocation. Over 1.7 million ethnic Russians and greater than half 1,000,000, or almost two-thirds, of ethnic Germans left the nation between 1989 and 1999. On the similar time, the birthrate of these remaining plummeted, inflicting the dimensions of the inhabitants to contract by greater than 9 % between 1991 and 2001, when it reached 14.9 million. These losses compounded the nation’s financial troubles. The lack of giant numbers of Russians and Germans, a disproportionate variety of whom had beforehand held expert positions within the Kazakh SSR’s authorities and largest industries, left a gaping gap within the nation’s labor provide.

These early social and financial troubles have been influential in shaping the earliest part of the nation’s independence. Mixed with a lack of subsidies from Moscow and disruptions to tax assortment mechanisms, the faltering financial system sharply decreased authorities income, resulting in a speedy deterioration within the high quality of public companies. The collapse additionally pressured the federal government to think about drastic financial reforms, which it laid out explicitly within the Kazakhstan 2030 Technique. Adopted in 1997, this technique prioritized lowering authorities interference in home and overseas commerce, enhancing tax and tariff administration, revising company governance constructions, encouraging overseas funding and worldwide ties, and privatizing state-owned enterprises.

The push to denationalise public enterprises had a very consequential affect on the way forward for the nation and its schooling system. Within the Nineties, it prompted a fireplace sale of state belongings. Overseas buyers, hoping to capitalize on cut price costs for a stake in Kazakhstan’s wealthy oil fields, descended on the nation. By 1999, almost half of all medium-size and two-thirds of all giant state enterprises had been bought off, in keeping with the European Financial institution for Reconstruction and Growth’s (EBRD’s) 1999 Transition Report.

Though nowhere close to as thorough because it was in different sectors of the financial system, this privatization drive prolonged to schooling as effectively. The Nineties witnessed a speedy enlargement of personal tutorial establishments, a lot of which, as time proved, have been of very poor high quality. Though most public colleges and universities remained below tight authorities management, laws issued shortly after independence launched tuition charges at public universities.

Whereas worldwide monetary establishments praised Kazakhstan’s leaders for his or her enthusiastic embrace of privatization, different observers have been extra skeptical. In 1999, Transparency Worldwide ranked Kazakhstan within the backside quintile of its Corruption Perceptions Index. Within the years that adopted, information stories uncovered the darkish underbelly of Kazakhstan’s free market reforms, revealing a world of backroom offers and widespread kickbacks extending to the very best ranges of presidency. In 2003, two businessmen from the US, one a former Mobil Oil Company government, have been charged in reference to $78 million in bribes to safe oil contracts. The bribes have been paid to 2 high-level Kazakhstani officers: the previous prime minister, Nurlan Balgimbaev, and Kazakhstan’s president, Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Whereas Kazakhstan’s post-independence financial transformation was speedy and disruptive, its political system was characterised by way more continuity. Nazarbayev, who had for years served because the prime minister of the Kazakh SSR and chairman of its Communist Get together, transitioned easily into the newly impartial nation’s prime submit as president. Though ostensibly working the nation as a democracy, as soon as in energy Nazarbayev shortly cracked down on any political opposition, successful a number of elections with greater than 95 % of the vote. Surprisingly, worldwide election screens have criticized each election since independence as unfree and coerced. Nazarbayev additionally shortly moved to centralize energy within the Workplace of the President, holding a good grip on all ranges of presidency. It stays to be seen what affect Nazarbayev’s resignation in 2019 could have on democratic processes. Regardless of resigning, Nazarbayev stays the chairman of the nation’s strongest army establishment and the chief of its dominant political social gathering.

These occasions had a formative affect on the course of Kazakhstan’s later historical past, and on its schooling system specifically. Though circumstances within the new millennium modified dramatically, the turmoil of those early years proceed to form the nation to at the present time.

The New Millennium: Kazakhstan’s Unsure Future

Kazakhstan’s expertise within the twenty-first century differs markedly from that of the final decade of the 20th. In 1999, Kazakhstan’s financial system entered a brand new part of speedy enlargement, spurred by the devaluation of the tenge, Kazakhstan’s forex, and the beginning of an almost decadelong interval through which the worldwide value of crude oil elevated greater than 10-fold. In 2006, after greater than half a decade throughout which annual GDP progress charges hovered at round 10 %, Kazakhstan’s financial system—which had solely lately appeared on the breaking point—earned it a spot among the many world’s upper-middle revenue international locations. With some notable exceptions, progress has remained stable since.

These enhancements have padded authorities coffers and sparked bold growth plans. In late 2012, President Nazarbayev unveiled the Kazakhstan 2050 Technique, an bold state plan geared toward making Kazakhstan one of many world’s 30 most developed international locations by the center of this century.

The booming oil financial system additionally drove up demand for professionals with the schooling and abilities to work within the new enterprises. Even right this moment, regardless of speedy progress in schooling participation charges, corporations nonetheless report widespread abilities shortages. In 2017, Kazakhstani executives listed an “inadequately educated workforce” as one of many prime three obstacles to doing enterprise within the nation, after entry to financing and corruption. Low unemployment charges again up these issues. In 2019, unemployment amongst youths between the ages of 15 and 24 stood at simply 3.7 %, effectively under the typical (12.4 %) amongst Group for Financial Co-operation and Growth (OECD) member states.² It was even decrease for extremely educated staff. Unemployment amongst these with at the very least a bachelor’s diploma or a short-cycle tertiary schooling was simply 3.5 % in 2017, in contrast with 5.3 % amongst these with an higher secondary schooling and 6.7 % of these with an elementary or decrease secondary schooling.

Regardless of the nation’s dramatic financial turnaround, troubles stay. For one, the advantages of progress haven’t all the time been evenly distributed. Located virtually completely in Central Asia, though a Western sliver of land extends previous the Ural River into Europe, Kazakhstan is the biggest landlocked nation and, by land mass, the ninth-largest nation on the planet. In contrast with its dimension, the nation’s inhabitants is small, simply 18.8 million in 2020, giving it a inhabitants density of simply 17 folks per sq. mile, among the many lowest on the planet. Kazakhstan’s inhabitants can also be very erratically distributed, with a fifth of the inhabitants tightly packed into simply three cities. Public companies and employment alternatives are equally concentrated in city areas, leading to giant financial and social disparities between city and rural communities.

The character of Kazakhstan’s financial progress—which has largely been pushed by its pure wealth—additionally presents challenges. With oil and associated merchandise accounting for almost three-quarters of the worth of Kazakhstan’s exports, speedy and disruptive swings have lengthy plagued the nation’s financial system, as periodic demand shocks upend the worldwide value of oil. For instance, only a few years after the Kazakhstan 2050 Technique was introduced, international overproduction of oil and falling demand induced international oil costs—and Kazakhstan’s financial output—to plummet. Annual GDP progress fell from 4.2 % in 2014 to just a bit greater than 1 % in 2015 and 2016.

The hazards of overdependence on petroleum exports have given new urgency to the federal government’s ongoing financial diversification efforts. Already within the Kazakhstan 2050 Technique, the federal government had pledged to make its financial system extra diversified and data based mostly. A lot of that will probably be pushed by schooling reforms. The technique prioritizes “supporting youth, schooling, and modern analysis,” and requires the creation of “an schooling system that promotes the expansion of the nation.”

These reforms will construct on these of the previous. For the reason that begin of the twenty-first century, rising revenues have allowed the federal government to plot bold reforms geared toward enhancing schooling and educating high quality, increasing entry to poorer college students, and aligning the system with worldwide norms. However to totally rework and diversify its financial system, the nation might want to present extra help to its schooling system. In its newest report on the progress of Kazakhstan’s transition to a market financial system, the European Financial institution for Reconstruction and Growth (EBRD) identifies the necessity to “enhance inclusion throughout areas and for susceptible inhabitants teams” as one of many nation’s key priorities in 2021. In elaborating on how these enhancements will be achieved, the report is unequivocal: “Reforms in schooling and vocational schooling have to speed up.”

Worldwide Scholar Mobility

Current developments in Kazakhstan have positioned a premium on international consciousness and engagement. In response, the federal government has tried to domesticate worldwide instructional connections by selling worldwide pupil mobility, each into and out of Kazakhstan, and inspiring the internationalization of its increased schooling system.

In its Educational Mobility Technique in Kazakhstan 2012-2020, the first coverage doc governing the nation’s internationalization technique over the previous decade, the federal government laid out a collection of daring internationalization objectives. These included having one in 5 Kazakhstani college students interact in some type of examine overseas by 2020, and rising the variety of worldwide college students learning at Kazakhstani universities by 20 % annually. Bettering the English language abilities of scholars and school, increasing the variety of packages provided in overseas languages, and selling hyperlinks with overseas universities and worldwide organizations have been additionally recognized as goals within the technique.

The federal government has backed these plans with concrete actions. It has funded beneficiant worldwide scholarship packages, issued directives requiring establishments to determine worldwide tutorial partnerships, and joined intergovernmental increased schooling initiatives, most notably, these related to the Bologna Course of.

The Bologna Course of

Kazakhstan’s gradual implementation of the rules underlining the Bologna Accord, which Kazakhstan joined as a full member in 2010, has had a big affect on worldwide pupil mobility. The federal government has moved to harmonize its schooling system with these of different members of the European Larger Training Space (EHEA), introducing a three-cycle (bachelor’s, grasp’s, and doctoral) {qualifications} construction and inspiring universities to undertake the European Credit score Switch and Accumulation System (ECTS), each of that are mentioned in additional element under. These modifications have elevated intraregional credential recognition and portability, selling pupil mobility between Kazakhstan and different EHEA member states.

Kazakhstan’s becoming a member of of the Bologna Course of has additionally helped spur the proliferation of worldwide tutorial and institutional partnerships, an specific objective of the federal government, which now requires all universities to determine worldwide partnerships. By the 2020/21 tutorial 12 months, Kazakhstani universities had signed almost 6,800 agreements with worldwide companions in 85 international locations. The overwhelming majority of those agreements have been signed with establishments in different EHEA member states.

Except for rising pupil and scholar mobility, the federal government hopes that these collaborations will assist enhance the data and abilities of home school and modernize tutorial programs and packages. Additionally serving to to additional these objectives are a rising variety of transnational schooling (TNE) packages, most notably joint and twin diploma packages, which permit college students to finish a part of their research at a Kazakhstani college and half at a global associate establishment. In 2020/21, Kazakhstani universities provided 108 double diploma or joint teaching programs with worldwide associate establishments.

The Bolashak Worldwide Scholarship

The federal government of Kazakhstan additionally depends on publicly funded scholarships to assist additional its internationalization objectives. Since 1993, an important has been the Bolashak Worldwide Scholarship, which the British Council described because the “finest scholarship program on the planet” at its 2014 Going International Convention.

The federal government’s objective for this system is partially revealed by its identify, “Bolashak,” which interprets into English as “future.” The presidential decree establishing the scholarship states that “Kazakhstan’s transition in the direction of market financial system and enlargement of worldwide contacts requires personnel with the superior western schooling, and it’s now essential to ship essentially the most proficient youth to review on the top-ranking universities overseas.”

The Bolashak scholarship goals at creating specialists in fields of public significance by funding the schooling of prime college students at prestigious abroad universities on the situation that they return to Kazakhstan and work for at least 5 years after commencement. In change, the federal government pays for the complete value of their abroad research, masking all the pieces from tuition and books to journey, housing, and different residing bills. The scholarship additionally funds pre-degree English language coaching, skilled internships, and non-degree coaching packages in important fields. Between 1993 and 2017, the federal government awarded almost 13,000 Bolashak scholarships.

The scholarship is run by the JSC Heart for Worldwide Applications, a part of the Ministry of Training and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan (MESRK). Eligibility standards have different broadly over the course of the scholarship’s existence. Since 2011, the scholarship has solely funded post-graduate diploma packages. In 2014, the middle additional restricted eligibility by rising the minimal qualifying Worldwide English Language Testing System (IELTS) rating and limiting the scholarship to college students accepted at universities ranked within the prime 200 on the QS World College Rankings, the Instances Larger Training World College Rankings, or the Educational Rating of World Universities.

In collaboration with pupil representatives, universities, and employers, the JSC Heart additionally determines the specialties which are eligible for scholarship funding. Printed knowledge recommend that the majority Bolashak recipients pursue packages in fields essential to the federal government’s social, financial, and political objectives, equivalent to data know-how, oil and gasoline growth, pedagogy, petrochemicals, political science, and public administration.

Outbound Mobility

However authorities funding alone will not be solely accountable for the big variety of Kazakhstani college students learning abroad annually. In 2014, consultants estimated that authorities scholarships funded the research of solely 30 % of all Kazakhstani college students enrolled overseas. The rest have been possible paying out of pocket, a chance open to rising numbers of Kazakhstani college students and their households because the nation’s financial system and center class broaden.

These capable of afford a global schooling are possible additional pushed to review overseas by an absence of seats at high-quality home establishments and by the stories of corruption which have plagued Kazakhstan’s increased schooling system for many years. The promise of a better high quality schooling abroad possible attracts a big proportion of Kazakhstani college students who would have in any other case remained at dwelling. In actual fact, few Kazakhstani worldwide college students stay abroad after commencement. Training brokers working in Kazakhstan estimate that round seven in ten Kazakhstani college students return dwelling instantly after finishing their research.

This mixture of things has made Kazakhstan a significant supply of worldwide college students worldwide. In 2018, Kazakhstan was the eighth-largest supply of worldwide degree-seeking college students globally, in keeping with knowledge compiled by the UNESCO Institute of Statistics (UIS).³ That 12 months, 83,503 Kazakhstani college students have been learning outdoors the nation. Development over the previous decade has additionally been significantly spectacular. Since 2009, outbound mobility has greater than doubled, peaking at 90,213 in 2016 earlier than declining barely over the previous two years.

Nonetheless, though many Kazakhstani college students are keen to cross the nation’s borders to review, most cease instantly on the opposite facet. The overwhelming majority of outbound Kazakhstani college students are enrolled in international locations straight bordering Kazakhstan, most notably Russia and China. Combining UIS knowledge with the most recent numbers supplied by China’s Ministry of Training means that greater than eight in ten worldwide Kazakhstani college students have been enrolled in a kind of two international locations.⁴

Russia and China

Kazakhstan has lengthy been the main supply of worldwide college students in Russia. In 2017, the most recent 12 months for which the related UIS knowledge is on the market, Russia hosted 65,237 Kazakhstani college students, greater than triple the variety of Uzbek college students (20,862), who make up the subsequent largest contingent of worldwide college students in Russia.

Unsurprisingly, the tutorial connection between Kazakhstan and Russia has a protracted historical past. For many years, the federal government of the Soviet Union supported a novel system of worldwide schooling and change, offering full funding to sure college students from constituent republics to review at tutorial establishments in different Soviet republics, most frequently within the Russian Federation. After its dissolution, the connection between former Soviet republics continued. In 1998, Kazakhstan signed a joint settlement with Belarus, the Kyrgyz Republic, and Russia (Tajikistan joined in 2002) that geared toward deepening “multilateral cooperation within the fields of schooling, sciences and cultures” and “setting requirements of mutual recognition of schooling paperwork, tutorial levels and ranks.”

Kazakhstan additionally cooperates carefully with Russia politically, militarily, and economically. Kazakhstan, alongside Belarus and Russia, was a founding member of the Eurasian Financial Union (EAEU), an integrative alliance that seeks to advertise the free motion of products and companies between a lot of East European, Western Asian, and Central Asian international locations. The Russian authorities has additionally made attracting worldwide college students a linchpin of its “tender energy” offensive in former Soviet republics, providing scholarships to proficient Kazakhstani college students, waiving pupil visa necessities, and permitting candidates to substitute a “tailored” college entrance examination for Russia’s nationwide college admissions examination, the Unified State Examination. In late 2020, Russia additionally eased guidelines regulating worldwide college students’ eligibility to work within the nation whereas learning.

Russian establishments additionally play a outstanding half in transnational schooling (TNE) in Kazakhstan. Within the 2020/21 tutorial 12 months, Russian universities accounted for a 3rd of all worldwide agreements signed by Kazakhstani universities, the very best of any nation by far. Though knowledge are unavailable, these collaborative packages possible funnel Kazakhstani college students to schools and universities situated in Russia. Different elements, together with geographic proximity, cultural and linguistic similarity (extra Kazakhstani residents communicate Russian than Kazakh), and the prepared availability of reasonably priced and high-quality establishments, possible additionally entice Kazakhstani college students to Russia.

China can also be an more and more outstanding vacation spot for Kazakhstani college students, though out there numbers will not be strictly comparable. In response to the Institute of Worldwide Training’s (IIE’s) Mission Atlas, the variety of Kazakhstani college students learning in China greater than doubled within the decade previous to the 2015/16 tutorial 12 months, rising from 5,666 in 2006/07 to 13,996 in 2015/16, earlier than declining to 11,784 in 2017/18.

China’s continued progress as a global pupil vacation spot has been bolstered by high quality enhancements on the nation’s universities and by bold government-funded initiatives, together with the Belt and Highway Initiative (BRI), an abbreviation of the mission’s official identify: the Silk Highway Financial Belt and 21^st-Century Maritime Silk Highway. Given Kazakhstan’s outstanding location on the traditional Silk Highway, it’s maybe unsurprising that the Chinese language authorities has directed a few of its outreach towards the nation, funding the institution of Confucius Institutes in Kazakhstan and financing scholarships for Kazakhstani college students to review in China.

America and Canada

Kazakhstani enrollments within the Western Hemisphere lag sharply behind these within the East. In the US, in addition they present few indicators of progress. After greater than tripling between 2004/05 and 2009/10, when it reached 1,936, enrollment has barely budged since. Simply 2,091 Kazakhstani college students have been enrolled in U.S. increased schooling establishments within the 2019/20 tutorial 12 months, in keeping with IIE’s Open Doorways report. A plurality (44 %) of those college students are at present enrolled on the undergraduate degree, with 35 % registered in graduate packages, 8 % in non-degree packages, and 13 % within the Elective Sensible Coaching (OPT) program.

A number of causes possible account for these low numbers, together with an abundance of high-quality universities situated nearer to dwelling, the excessive value of schools and universities within the U.S., and the commonly low ranges of English proficiency amongst Kazakhstani college students. Regardless of a strenuous authorities effort to advertise English language competence, launched by President Nazarbayev within the 2007 Trinity of Languages program, total English language proficiency in Kazakhstan stays low. The EF English Proficiency Index (EPI) has ranked Kazakhstan within the lowest English proficiency band yearly since 2011. Training brokers working in Kazakhstan verify these assessments, reporting that the majority Kazakhstani college students have weak English language abilities and often require preparatory English coaching earlier than starting their full-time research.

Regardless of the 2 international locations’ sharing most of the similar challenges, Canada’s expertise differs sharply from that of the U.S. Whereas nonetheless low in contrast with Kazakhstani enrollments in Russia and China, enrollment in Canada has grown steadily after reaching a nadir of simply 45 Kazakhstani college students in 2004. In response to statistics from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC), enrollment progress has averaged greater than 9 % a 12 months over the previous decade, reaching 1,195 in 2019. This pattern is hardly distinctive to Kazakhstani enrollments: Canada’s high-quality and comparatively low-cost establishments in addition to the nation’s extra welcoming insurance policies towards each worldwide college students and internationally educated immigrants have been attracting rising numbers of scholars from around the globe for years.

Inbound Mobility

For many years, Kazakhstan attracted comparatively few worldwide college students. Growing its native-born workforce was lengthy the federal government’s main motive for selling internationalization, so it naturally positioned far much less emphasis on rising inbound pupil mobility than it did on boosting outbound flows.

The poor repute of Kazakhstan’s increased schooling system additionally did little to draw worldwide college students. A 2017 overview by the OECD of Kazakhstan’s increased schooling system recognized a handful of things discouraging worldwide college students from learning within the nation, together with the commonly poor situation of Kazakhstan’s college services and companies, widespread corruption, and an absence of packages provided in English.⁵ The OECD report concludes that, “Whereas it might be potential to extend inbound pupil numbers by working extra carefully with support companies, till the standard and integrity of upper schooling are demonstrably improved, substantial will increase are unlikely.” In consequence, Kazakhstan’s common inbound mobility ratio between 2010 and 2018 stood at simply 1.6 %, effectively under the world common (2.2 %), in keeping with UIS knowledge.

However over the previous two years, this image has modified dramatically. Between 2018 and 2020, the variety of worldwide college students enrolled in Kazakhstan expanded sharply, rising 184 %, from 14,332 in 2018 to 40,742 in 2020. In 2019, its inbound mobility ratio rose to three.32 %, an all-time excessive.

This transformation coincided with a renewed push by the federal government to draw worldwide college students. In early 2018, MESRK introduced its plans to rework the nation right into a “Central Asian instructional hub,” setting an bold objective of attracting 50,000 worldwide college students by 2022.

Knowledge recommend that MESRK’s concentrate on Central Asia has paid off. Kazakhstan attracts extra worldwide college students from around the globe than some other nation in Central Asia. College students from different Central Asian international locations additionally make up the vast majority of all worldwide college students in Kazakhstan. In actual fact, a lot of the latest uptick in worldwide college students learning in Kazakhstan was pushed by a rise in enrollments from Uzbekistan. Between 2018 and 2020 alone, the variety of Uzbek college students in Kazakhstan grew almost sevenfold, rising from 3,768 in 2018 to 26,130 in 2020.

However there are indicators that that speedy enlargement might show short-lived. Lately, Uzbekistan has launched essential reforms to its personal increased schooling system, considerably increasing the variety of seats and public grants out there on the nation’s lengthy overcrowded universities. Extra controversially, authorities officers have publicly inspired Uzbek college students enrolled overseas to return dwelling, even going as far as to exempt returning college students from nationwide college entrance examinations. Whereas it stays to be seen precisely what affect these modifications could have on Kazakhstan’s inbound pupil numbers, early stories recommend that it may very well be extreme.

Exterior of Central Asia, India is a big supply of worldwide college students in Kazakhstan. Over the previous 5 years, Indian pupil enrollment has grown by 159 %, rising from 1,716 in 2016 to 4,453 in 2020. A lot of that progress is pushed by the demand of Indian college students for a medical schooling, which in India is pricey and arduous to entry. Even when India’s latest medical reforms handle to extend the nation’s capacity to coach its personal medical college students, rising political, financial, and cultural cooperation between Kazakhstan and India bode effectively for the long run.

Kazakhstan’s rising reputation lends credence to a number of the extra optimistic projections of the nation’s future function in worldwide pupil mobility. In a 2012 paper, Geoffrey David Wilmoth, director of the schooling consulting agency Studying Cities Worldwide, argues that Kazakhstan is effectively poised to rework itself into a global schooling hub if it could actually efficiently reform its increased schooling system.

In Temporary: The Training System of Kazakhstan

Just like the nation as a complete, schooling in Kazakhstan is in transition. Regardless of a long time of presidency efforts geared toward modernizing and internationalizing the schooling system, the imprint of its Soviet previous stays outstanding.

A lot of that inheritance is optimistic. Throughout the Soviet period, the state invested closely in schooling, establishing a stable community of kindergarten, elementary, and secondary colleges. In consequence, literacy and enrollment charges skyrocketed—in 1990, one 12 months earlier than independence, the Kazakh SSR’s elementary gross enrollment ratio stood at 116 %. The Soviet state additionally did a lot to develop increased schooling within the republic, leaving Kazakhstan 55 universities upon independence.

Nonetheless, Soviet-era schooling had vital shortcomings. Though total enrollment charges expanded quickly, entry for a lot of rural Kazakhstanis, particularly to secondary and post-secondary schooling, remained restricted. On the nation’s universities, inflexible educating practices, a slim concentrate on creating technical abilities, and restricted analysis capability hampered high quality. Sturdy centralized management over all ranges of the schooling system additionally made it troublesome for educators and directors to adapt their practices to native circumstances or altering circumstances. Lastly, upon independence, Kazakhstan’s Soviet previous left its schooling system remoted internationally, because the distinctive construction of Soviet {qualifications} diverged sharply from worldwide, or at the very least Western, requirements.

The turmoil of Kazakhstan’s first decade of independence added considerably to the challenges its schooling system confronted. With the financial system and public revenues collapsing, the federal government moved shortly to shift the duty for schooling funding from the general public purse to personal pockets, speeding by means of measures to denationalise the possession and financing of schooling. In consequence, low-quality non-public establishments proliferated. Between 1995, the primary 12 months for which knowledge can be found, and 2004, authorities funding for schooling as a share of GDP collapsed, falling from 4.03 % to 2.26 %.

These preliminary disruptions had various results on completely different ranges of the schooling system. Some, equivalent to pre-elementary and technical and vocational schooling, have been hit arduous—establishments quickly shuttered and enrollment dropped sharply. Different ranges have been impacted far much less, at the very least within the brief time period. Beginning within the early 2000s, the consequences of the demographic contraction of Kazakhstan’s first decade of independence led to declining enrollments throughout the board.

The early 2000s additionally introduced with them a dramatic change within the fortunes of Kazakhstan’s schooling system. Rising oil wealth expanded the federal government’s reform capability, permitting it to embark on a collection of sweeping schooling reforms. With various ranges of success, the federal government launched measures geared toward aligning the nation’s {qualifications} framework with EHEA requirements and lengthening the elementary and secondary college cycle to 12 years. With respect to increased schooling, authorities officers adopted an “optimization coverage” geared towards eliminating the low-quality establishments established since independence.

The outcomes have been spectacular. In 2011, Kazakhstan was ranked first worldwide on UNESCO’s Training for All Growth Index (EDI), which measures elementary enrollment and completion charges, grownup literacy ranges, and gender parity in schooling and literacy. Immediately, enrollment in elementary and secondary schooling is almost common, with negligible variations in entry and achievement by gender. Worldwide organizations, such because the OECD, have additionally praised the Kazakhstani schooling system for its low repetition charges. Most Kazakhstani college students progress easily from one grade to the subsequent, with few held again.

However schooling within the republic nonetheless faces vital challenges. Kazakhstani college students carry out poorly on worldwide standardized assessments, and the nation’s excessive EDI rating belies giant regional and socioeconomic disparities in instructional entry and achievement. These challenges are exacerbated by low ranges of presidency help for schooling. Regardless of the financial system’s speedy progress, schooling funding stays low, reaching simply 2.6 % of GDP in 2018, effectively under the OECD common (round 5 %), leaving college infrastructure in a lot of the nation insufficient and underdeveloped. And regardless of latest modifications, the nation’s extremely centralized system of administration and governance has lengthy challenged Kazakhstan’s educators and reformers.

Administration of the Training System

Kazakhstan is a unitary republic comprising 18 principal administrative divisions: 14 areas (oblyslar in Kazakh and oblasts in Russian) and 4 particular standing cities⁶ which possess the identical diploma of administrative and political autonomy because the oblyslar that encompass them. Oblyslar are divided into greater than 170 districts, or rayons, that are additional subdivided into 1000’s of villages and rural communities. Regardless of the latest introduction of decentralization reforms, Kazakhstan’s central authorities retains tight management over regional and native authorities, with the president appointing regional governors (akims), the very best regional government officers, to steer oblyslar and particular standing cities.

Governance of the schooling system is equally centralized. Presidential orders, acts of parliament, and ministerial decrees issued from the nation’s capital tightly regulate all ranges of the nation’s schooling system. The 2007 legislation On Training, plus its 2011 and 2015 amendments, defines the present authorized framework governing schooling in Kazakhstan. Training delivered all through the nation should conform to the legislation’s decrees.

Since independence, the Govt Workplace of the President of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the Ministry of Training and Science of the Republic of Kazakhstan (MESRK) have assumed main duty for schooling administration. The Workplace of the President develops high-level schooling goals and manages main initiatives, spearheading particular initiatives just like the Nazarbayev Mental Faculties (NIS) and Nazarbayev College, mentioned in additional element under. The president additionally performs an essential function in creating the nation’s schooling insurance policies, that are specified by complete state packages. Over the previous decade, two state packages have been significantly decisive: the State Programme of Training Growth within the Republic of Kazakhstan for 2011-2020 (SPED 2011-2020) and the State Programme of Training Growth within the Republic of Kazakhstan for 2016-2019 (SPED 2016-2019).

MESRK’s duties are extra wide-ranging, together with funding and administration of your entire schooling system in addition to its strategic planning. Because the nation’s central schooling authority, MESRK additionally assumes main duty for guaranteeing that the schooling legal guidelines and state teaching programs are carried out all through the nation.

As well as, MESRK regulates course content material and program design. In any respect ranges of schooling, from preschool to increased schooling, each private and non-private establishments are required to observe the requirements and curriculum pointers outlined in State Obligatory Requirements⁷ (SCS). Developed by the Nationwide Academy of Training (NAE), an company of MESRK, SCS prescribe obligatory topics, educating strategies, and academic packages. The newest SCS—up to date in 2017—seeks to deal with criticism leveled by, amongst others, the OECD in its 2018 Training Coverage Outlook, that earlier curricula centered an excessive amount of on rote memorization, by as a substitute emphasizing competencies, equivalent to “important pondering and creativity.”

Whereas MESRK has traditionally performed an essential function in curriculum growth on the increased schooling degree, since Kazakhstan joined the Bologna Course of, it has begun to concede increasingly management over content material and programs to accredited establishments. As of 2015, increased schooling establishments have been capable of decide 55 % of program content material in bachelor’s packages, 70 % in grasp’s packages, and 90 % in doctoral packages.

MESRK can also be accountable for licensing and testifying establishments educating at any degree of schooling, guaranteeing institutional compliance with related laws, and assessing pupil studying outcomes. Till 2021, MESRK, like many different post-Soviet schooling ministries, even regulated the format of diplomas earned in any respect public universities and at non-public universities accredited by a registered, impartial accreditation company.

Previous to independence, the federal government was completely accountable for financing schooling. That modified quickly within the early Nineties when the federal government legalized non-public possession of instructional establishments and launched tuition charges at public universities. In recent times, round 29 % of college college students obtained state-funded grants; the remaining paid out of pocket. On the elementary and secondary ranges, the federal government lately launched a per capita funding scheme, below which the quantity of public funding a faculty receives will probably be decided by the variety of college students it enrolls. The federal government hopes that the brand new funding scheme will immediate college directors to enhance instructional services and educating high quality, as colleges compete for college kids and the federal government funding that comes with them.

Whereas the federal government has lengthy maintained tight management over all ranges of schooling, latest reforms have tried to decentralize schooling administration. To broaden stakeholder engagement, governing boards of trustees have been launched in elementary and secondary colleges and public universities in 2007. In colleges, these boards are made up of fogeys and neighborhood representatives, though as of but they play solely a restricted function at school governance. College boards, composed of private and non-private sector representatives, additionally lack vital operational autonomy, functioning principally in an advisory capability.

The 12-12 months Obligatory Training Reform

The federal government has additionally launched into expansive reforms geared toward modernizing the standard and construction of the nation’s schooling system, among the many most essential of which is the extension of college schooling from 11 to 12 years. Nonetheless ongoing, the reform’s stalled implementation illustrates the challenges confronted by Kazakhstani policymakers in modernizing the nation’s schooling system.

The federal government first moved to replace the elementary and secondary college cycle within the early 2000s. In 2001, MESRK introduced its intention to increase the schooling cycle from 11 to 12 years to raised align the nation’s schooling system with worldwide norms. The reform would construct on these of the nation’s Soviet previous; in 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev, then the chief of the Soviet Union, launched reforms that lengthened college schooling in all Soviet republics from 10 to 11 years. Within the state schooling program adopted in 2004, SPED 2005-2010, the federal government set a completion date of 2010.

However because it was first introduced, implementation of the 12-year cycle has been repeatedly postponed, largely, due to inadequate authorities funding. The SPED 2011-2020 attributed the delays to “inadequate materials and technical assets, instructional and methodical base, in addition to the need of updating the content material and strategies of schooling.” It additionally laid out a brand new, staggered implementation schedule, set to start within the 2015/16 tutorial 12 months with grades 1, 5, and 11 and to finish in 2019/20 with all grades working below the 12-year system.

Nevertheless, in late 2014, the collapse in international oil costs and falling authorities revenues pressured MESRK to push the timeline again as soon as extra. As earlier than, the necessity to develop a brand new curriculum; to print, distribute, and prepare lecturers in the usage of new textbooks; and to assemble new studying services able to dealing with a further 12 months of educating held again reforms. The Minister of Training and Science acknowledged in late 2019 that, “Our landmark is 2021. We’re planning and at the moment are laying within the draft nationwide program.” In early 2021, MESRK introduced that gradual implementation of the 12-year cycle would start in 2023.

When lastly carried out, the reform will add a further 12 months to the beginning of a pupil’s tutorial profession, reducing the age at which college students are required to start elementary schooling from 7 to six, whereas leaving the everyday age at which college students graduate from secondary college (age 17 or 18) unchanged. Though nationwide implementation has lengthy been delayed, the 12-year cycle has been rolled out experimentally in a restricted variety of colleges all through the nation. In 2012, it was piloted in over 100 colleges. In 2015/16, 30 extra have been added, amongst them, Nazarbayev Mental Faculties (NIS).

Educational Calendar and Language of Instruction

Kazakhstan possesses a wealthy mosaic of ethnicities and languages. Its two largest ethnic teams are Kazakh (63 %) and Russian (24 %). Its prolonged immersion in Russia’s sphere of affect, which lengthy predates its absorption into the Soviet Union, has had a profound affect on the languages spoken all through the nation. Three a long time after independence, extra folks in Kazakhstan communicate Russian (94 %) than Kazakh (83 %), a Turkic language and the native language of the Kazakh folks.

Kazakhstan’s language insurance policies have advanced significantly within the a long time because the nation declared its independence. As a part of Kazakhstan’s try to forge a unified nationwide id, the newly impartial authorities initially promoted the unfold of the Kazakh language, formally elevating it above all others. The nation’s 1995 structure, its second post-independence structure, established Kazakh because the official nationwide language, even going as far as to require that the president possess “an ideal command” of the Kazakh language. It accorded Russian much less significance, granting it official standing solely in public establishments, the place Russian was for use on “equal grounds” with Kazakh.

Extra lately the federal government has pursued a trilingual coverage geared toward rising the inhabitants’s proficiency in Kazakh, Russian, and English. In recognition of English because the lingua franca of worldwide enterprise and commerce, the coverage set a objective of increasing the proportion of Kazakhstani residents talking English to twenty % and the proportion talking all three languages to fifteen % by 2020. Amongst different measures, the coverage requires increasing the share of presidency language coaching facilities providing English language programs. Whereas knowledge recommend that the coverage’s objectives have been reached, with the CIA World Factbook estimating in 2017 that round 22 % of the inhabitants speaks all three languages, as famous above, different organizations fee the nation’s common English proficiency very low.

In keeping with state coverage, MESRK has promoted the usage of English within the nation’s colleges and universities, particularly within the educating of science, know-how, and engineering topics. Over 150 colleges have launched English because the language of instruction for biology, chemistry, data know-how, and physics in grades 10 and 11, whereas a whole bunch of others provide elective programs and actions performed in English. MESRK has additionally begun to prepare English language coaching packages for lecturers in these fields, rewarding those that obtain a excessive degree of English competence with a pay bump. Policymakers are additionally hoping to introduce the subsequent era of scholars to English early. In 2016, English was made a obligatory topic on the preschool degree.

Different vital linguistic reforms are underway in Kazakhstan. In 2017, President Nursultan Nazarbayev introduced a gradual swap from a Cyrillic to a Latin alphabet within the writing of Kazakh, to be accomplished by 2025. Officers contend that the change is “a part of a modernization drive and an try to make use of know-how simpler” and that it’s going to “profit Kazakhstan’s growth” to undertake an alphabet utilized by 70 % of the world. Implementation has since been delayed, with the federal government now hoping to finish the transition by 2031. Within the schooling system, the brand new alphabet will probably be launched progressively because the nation updates its textbooks in preparation for the implementation of the 12-year schooling mannequin.

Though Kazakhstan’s 1995 structure ensures its residents the suitable to “freely select the language of communication, schooling, instruction and inventive actions,” since independence, most instructional establishments have provided instruction in both Kazakh or Russian. Naturally sufficient, the language of instruction utilized in a faculty or college usually mirrors that spoken most steadily by members of the neighborhood served by the varsity. Since independence, the usage of Kazakh in colleges and universities has grown. Within the early 2000s, Russian was used because the language of instruction in universities 58 % of the time; Kazakh, 40 %; and Uzbek, round 1 %. Extra lately, these percentages have been reversed. At first of the 2020/21 tutorial 12 months, 65 % of college college students have been enrolled in packages taught in Kazakh, 29 % in Russian-taught packages, and round 6 % in English-taught packages.

On the elementary and secondary ranges, the numbers are comparable. Greater than half (51 %) of basic day colleges, which educate all elementary and secondary grades, educate in Kazakh, whereas simply 17 % educate completely in Russian; 31 % provide instruction in each Kazakh and Russian. Regardless of educating a majority of the nation’s youngsters, studying outcomes at Kazakh-medium colleges lag these of their Russian-language counterparts. Outcomes from the OECD’s 2012 Program for Worldwide Scholar Evaluation (PISA) revealed giant disparities in efficiency, with college students in Kazakh-medium colleges performing effectively behind their friends in Russian-medium colleges.

Regardless of the language of instruction, the tutorial calendar in colleges and universities all through Kazakhstan usually runs from September to Could or June. The elementary and secondary college 12 months lasts for a most of 34 weeks and is usually divided into quarters. At increased schooling establishments, the tutorial 12 months often extends over 36 weeks, consisting of two semesters of 15 weeks plus breaks, though some establishments function on a trimester or quarterly system.

Early Childhood Training

Of all levels of its schooling system, the turbulence of Kazakhstan’s first post-independence decade hit early childhood schooling (ECE) the toughest. In lower than a decade, the well-organized preschool system inherited from its Soviet previous virtually fully collapsed, as authorities help dried up and the agricultural and industrial enterprises which ran many preschools closed. Preschool organizations (POs), which embrace a wide range of establishments offering each childcare and pre-elementary schooling to youngsters between the ages of 1 and 6 or 7, declined 88 % between 1991 and 2000, from 8,881 to 1,089, in keeping with authorities statistics. The enrollment decline was simply as dramatic, falling from a peak of greater than 1 million in 1991 to a bit lower than 125,000 in 1999. The pre-elementary gross enrollment ratio (GER) fell from 82 % to fifteen % over the identical interval.

Kazakhstan’s financial turnaround stemmed a lot of the bleeding, and enrollment ranges remained kind of secure for the primary decade of the twenty-first century. They started to take off round 2010, as the federal government turned its consideration, and its rising tax receipts, towards ECE, focusing specifically on the 12 months simply earlier than the beginning of elementary schooling. The Kazakhstan 2050 Technique explicitly recognized ECE as a precedence, and the SPED 2011-2020 set a objective of increasing ECE enrollment to all youngsters between the ages of three and 6 by 2020.

Whereas that objective was not attained, the outcomes have nonetheless been spectacular. Enrollment in POs reached almost 900,000 in 2019, a twenty-first century excessive. The next 12 months, though absolute enrollment numbers declined barely, the pre-elementary GER rose to 74 %. Whereas this progress has been exceptional, that Kazakhstan’s preschool enrollment numbers nonetheless path their pre-independence peak reveals the depth of the disruption attributable to the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Immediately, entry to ECE for all youngsters ages one to 6 is a proper assured by the federal government. Dad and mom can enroll their youngsters in a lot of several types of POs, each private and non-private. Most kids attend kindergartens, that are divided into nursery kindergartens, attended by youngsters between the ages of 1 and three, and common kindergartens, attended by youngsters ages three to 6. The following hottest class of ECE supplier is the preschool mini-center, launched by the federal government to broaden rural entry. To accommodate rural circumstances, MESRK grants mini-centers a excessive diploma of flexibility, permitting them to shorten the varsity day or to function from unconventional areas, equivalent to neighborhood facilities or non-public properties.

MESRK tightly controls the content material of schooling supplied at each private and non-private POs. It has authorized 4 separate units of curriculum pointers for various age teams, every of which prescribes the themes that have to be taught and the supplies, right down to the books and toys, that can be utilized. Since 2016, English has been a compulsory topic in preschools for kids over the age of 5. Unsurprisingly, home and worldwide consultants, together with these drafting a 2017 OECD overview of Kazakhstan’s ECE system, have criticized these preparations as rigid.

Regardless of efforts to broaden entry, that very same 2017 OECD overview recognized “geographical, socio-economic, and particular wants inequities relating to entry to and participation in ECE.” In idea, enrollment in public preschools is free for 3 years, throughout which folks are accountable just for the price of their little one’s lunch. As a substitute of counting on non-public charges, each private and non-private preschools ought to obtain satisfactory funding from the federal government, which at present determines the extent of public funding every college receives by the variety of college students they enroll. However the OECD’s overview discovered that the effectivity of this per capita funding scheme, whereas admirably intentioned, has been hampered by poorly calibrated funding ranges, which have pressured POs to cost mother and father to cowl fundamental operational bills. In consequence, many Kazakhstanis nonetheless pay vital charges out of pocket. In 2010, the bottom revenue quintile spent, on common, a stunning 45 % of their family expenditure on ECE, which the report concludes possible accounts for the low enrollment ratios for that quintile, simply 19 % of whom attended ECE.

Knowledge additionally reveal regional disparities in entry and enrollment. In a reversal of typical developments in Kazakhstan, ECE protection in city communities lags that of rural areas. The OECD’s 2018 Training Coverage Outlook notes that regional charges of ECE participation for kids over age 3 have been lowest within the nation’s two largest cities: Almaty and Nur-Sultan.

Additional help of the ECE system might pay dividends. This similar OECD coverage transient notes that even after controlling for socioeconomic background, Kazakhstani college students who had attended preschool for multiple 12 months scored 11 factors increased on the PISA 2012 than those that had by no means attended in any respect.

Elementary Training

Within the brief time period, the chaos of the preliminary years of post-independence impacted elementary enrollment far lower than it did preschool enrollment. Between 1990 and 1996, when enrollment peaked at almost 1.4 million, progress was optimistic in yearly however one, in keeping with UIS knowledge. Though the elementary GER did decline, the bottom it ever fell was 96 %, which it reached in 1999.

As a substitute, the demographic contraction of that first decade had a delayed affect on enrollment ranges. Beginning in 1997, elementary enrollment started a greater than decadelong decline, falling to a low of lower than 950,000 in 2007. The rise in birthrates, which started within the early 2000s, finally reversed the decline. Elementary enrollment has elevated steadily since 2010, rising by greater than half by 2020, when it exceeded 1.5 million.

Public college schooling—elementary and secondary—in Kazakhstan is obligatory and out there free to all Kazakhstani residents and has been because the adoption of Kazakhstan’s present structure in 1995. Previous to 2020, college students usually entered elementary college on the age of seven, though college students passing an entrance examination might start a 12 months earlier. As of 2020, all college students should start elementary schooling, which lasts for simply 4 years (grades 1 to 4), on the age of six, an adjustment geared toward holding the everyday age of commencement from higher secondary college the identical following the nation’s transition to a 12-year schooling mannequin.

The elementary curriculum is organized round a handful of instructional fields, together with language and literacy, arithmetic and laptop science, pure sciences, man and society (which goals at “learning the social phenomena of the previous and current and their interrelations”), know-how and artwork, and bodily schooling. College students should examine two languages: one native, equivalent to Kazakh, Russian, or one other native language; and one overseas language, usually English. Tutorial hours on the elementary degree are at present capped at 29 hours per week.

Decrease Secondary Training

Secondary schooling is split into two phases: decrease, which is understood in Kazakhstan as fundamental secondary schooling, and higher, which is called senior or basic secondary schooling. In Kazakhstan, the phrase “basic secondary schooling” will not be used completely to discuss with the ultimate part of secondary schooling; it’s typically additionally used to discuss with your entire cycle of college schooling, from grades 1 to 11 or 12.

Below the 11-year system, fundamental secondary schooling lasts for 5 years, spanning grades 5 to 9. Below the 12-year system, decrease secondary schooling will probably be prolonged by one 12 months, lasting from grade 5 to grade 10. The themes taught below the 12-year system will differ little from these taught below the previous system. At the moment, the essential secondary schooling curriculum consists of arts, laptop sciences, historical past, languages and literature, arithmetic, pure sciences (equivalent to physics, chemistry, biology, and geography), and bodily schooling. After finishing the required interval of examine, college students take a last attestation, or last certification, examination. College students passing each their coursework and the ultimate attestation examination are awarded the Certificates of Fundamental Secondary Training (Svidetel’stvo ob okonchanii osnovnoy shkoly).

For the reason that 2011/12 college 12 months, on the finish of grade 9, some fundamental secondary college students have additionally needed to sit for a standardized, nationwide competency evaluation, the Exterior Assessments of Scholar Achievement (EASA),⁸ administered at a pattern of colleges all through the nation. The EASA exams college students in Kazakh and three different topics chosen by MESRK. Whereas EASA outcomes don’t have any affect on college students’ tutorial development, they’re utilized by the Committee for Management within the Area of Training and Science (CCFES), a MESRK board, to check the standard of educating at completely different colleges, to evaluate combination studying outcomes, and to observe the nation’s progress towards reaching its schooling objectives. In 2015, the EASA was launched on the finish of grade 4; in 2017, it was expanded to grade 11.

Higher Secondary Training

After finishing fundamental secondary schooling, often at round age 15, college students are ready to decide on between two completely different streams: tutorial, additionally referred to easily as basic secondary, and vocational. In 2017, round 60 % of scholars on the higher secondary degree have been enrolled within the tutorial stream and 40 % within the vocational stream, in keeping with the 2018 OECD Training Coverage Outlook talked about above. All college students electing to pursue basic secondary schooling are robotically enrolled within the first two years of senior secondary schooling, grades 10 and 11 within the previous system and grades 11 and 12 within the new 12-year system.

Obligatory basic secondary schooling topics are algebra and the start of research, biology, chemistry, geography, geometry, the historical past of Kazakhstan, human society and the basics of legislation, data know-how, Kazakh or Russian language and literature, a overseas language (usually English), physics, and world historical past. College students in higher secondary schooling examine a most of 39 hours per week. They’re graded on a five-point scale, with 3 representing the minimal passing grade and 5, the very best.

Since 2017, college students finishing the ultimate 12 months of higher secondary schooling sit for a last attestation, or last certification, examination that exams 4 obligatory topics (algebra and the start of research, the historical past of Kazakhstan, Kazakh or Russian language, and native language and literature) and one elective topic. College students passing their programs and the examination are awarded the Certificates of Normal Secondary Training (Attestat o obshchem srednem obrazovanii).

College students hoping to enroll in increased teaching programs can even sit for the Unified Nationwide Check (UNT), mentioned in additional element under. Previous to 2017, the UNT performed a much more essential function within the nation’s schooling system, functioning as each a college entrance examination and an higher secondary school-leaving examination, though college students opting to not take the UNT have been nonetheless capable of graduate. Outcomes from the UNT have been additionally utilized by MESRK to rank lecturers, colleges, and areas. The apply has since been deserted due to criticism that it might result in unfair comparisons.

Faculty Infrastructure and Amenities

Most Kazakhstani college students are enrolled on the whole day colleges which educate all grades, from elementary to higher secondary. New colleges have to be licensed earlier than they will start educating and should bear inspection, a course of often called attestation, each 5 years. Each the licensing and attestation course of are managed by MESRK.

Regardless of close to common enrollment, college services in a lot of the nation stay insufficient. In closely populated city areas, colleges generally function in a number of shifts, with college students in sure grades attending within the morning, and people in different grades, within the night. Within the 2009/10 college 12 months, two-thirds of all colleges operated in two or extra shifts. The SPED 2011-2020 indicated that there have been even 70 three-shift colleges and one which had 4 shifts. A number of-shift colleges should typically shorten educating hours, making it troublesome for them to satisfy the minimal tutorial hours set by MESRK.

Alternatively, in rural areas, lessons are at occasions so small that the federal government has approved multi-grade educating. These small rural colleges, often called small-class or ungraded colleges, are sometimes tormented by trainer shortages and decaying infrastructure. The OECD’s 2018 coverage outlook notes that 42 % of public colleges have been small-class, catering to only 8 % of all college students.

These college and trainer shortages could partly clarify Kazakhstan’s poor efficiency in PISA assessments. On the 2018 PISA, Kazakhstani college students scored effectively under the OECD common in all three topics: studying, arithmetic, and science. Maybe much more regarding, Kazakhstan’s 2018 scores in each topic declined from these achieved throughout earlier PISA cycles. Given this decline, it appears unlikely that the disparities in studying outcomes revealed by the outcomes of earlier PISA exams have been reversed. A 2015 OECD Overview of Faculty Sources in Kazakhstan famous that 2012 PISA knowledge revealed that “the language of instruction in colleges (Kazakh or Russian), college location (city or rural), and the socio-economic background of scholars and colleges make a distinction in college students’ efficiency.”

Nazarbayev Mental Faculties (NIS) and Nazarbayev College

Kazakhstan additionally maintains a community of extremely aggressive, state-funded studying establishments often called Nazarbayev Mental Faculties (NIS). Within the phrases of their eponymous founder, Kazakhstan’s first president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, the intention of NIS is to arrange “the subsequent era of global-minded leaders in Kazakhstan” to fill key roles within the nation’s authorities and main firms, and to perform as “platforms for testing and growth of up-to-date tutorial packages.”

For the reason that first NIS opened in Astana in 2008, their numbers have grown steadily. There are at present 20 NIS working in all 14 oblyslar. NIS educate all grades of the 12-year elementary and secondary schooling cycle. Instruction is performed in all three of the languages promoted within the authorities’s trilingual coverage—Kazakh, Russian, and English—though higher secondary schooling is delivered completely in English.

Though NIS observe the identical State Curriculum Requirements as all different Kazakhstani colleges, their services, funding ranges, and trainer {qualifications} are all far superior. NIS even have way more flexibility to innovate and adapt to pupil wants. Though their funding is finally supplied by the federal government, NIS function autonomously, free from authorities interference. In idea, this association permits them to pilot essentially the most fashionable schooling strategies and packages, essentially the most profitable of which is able to then be rolled out nationwide.

In 2010, President Nazarbayev launched an analogous initiative on the increased schooling degree. Nazarbayev College is a publicly funded analysis establishment meant to be a “main mannequin of upper schooling, which might set up a benchmark for all increased schooling establishments of the nation.” Additionally ruled independently of the state, Nazarbayev College has been granted an distinctive diploma of educational freedom, permitting it to develop teaching programs by itself and to experiment with the most recent educating and analysis strategies. The college can also be meant to be a mannequin of internationalization, partnering with main universities and attracting prime students from across the globe.

Nazarbayev College, Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan

However each NIS and Nazarbayev College have been criticized for exacerbating instructional and socioeconomic inequality. Commentators have warned that the institution of NIS could finally consequence within the creation of two, unequal streams of schooling, with the majority of the nation’s college students unable to entry the high-quality schooling NIS present. Others have criticized them for drawing a disproportionate share of total authorities spending on schooling, funds that may very well be used extra effectively to enhance your entire schooling system if unfold extra broadly. A 2017 OECD overview of Kazakhstan’s increased schooling system notes that: “Nazarbayev College is consuming a big portion of complete public spending. At finest, that is an experiment that carries substantial dangers: it’s an open query whether or not any excellence that the college could obtain can outweigh decreased funding for the remainder of the system, and whether or not this excellence will be shared in a approach that advantages your entire system of upper schooling.”

Technical and Vocational Training and Coaching (TVET)

The federal government of Kazakhstan views technical and vocational schooling and coaching (TVET), typically identified in Kazakhstan as technical {and professional} schooling (TPE), as an essential technique of assembly the nation’s growth objectives. The SPED 2011-2020 recognized the modernization of the nation’s TVET system “in accordance with the calls for of society and industrial-innovative growth of financial system, integration into the worldwide instructional house” as a precedence. Different authorities plans, together with MESRK’s Motion Plan for 2014 to 2016, have sought to broaden the community of TVET establishments nationwide, to enhance TVET trainer coaching, and to advertise business partnerships.

TVET in Kazakhstan is run by the Technical and Vocational Training Division of MESRK. The division is accountable for total planning and monitoring of the sector, in addition to the administration of business partnerships and trainer coaching.

Vocational Secondary Training

After finishing fundamental secondary schooling, college students can select to enter both the overall tutorial stream or the vocational stream. College students selecting the vocational stream enroll in specialised TVET schools, which regularly provide each secondary and post-secondary TVET {qualifications}. There are at present greater than 750 technical {and professional} schools in Kazakhstan, 58 % of that are public; the remaining are non-public. As talked about above, round 40 % of all higher secondary college students are enrolled within the technical and vocational stream.

Vocational secondary teaching programs are usually longer than basic secondary teaching programs, lasting from three to 4 years. After finishing the required coursework and coaching, college students sit for a vocational examination or submit a commencement mission, after which profitable college students are awarded a Diploma of Vocational Secondary Training, generally additionally translated as Diploma of Technical and Skilled Training. Though designed to arrange graduates for work as certified technical and repair professionals, college students incomes a TVET diploma can even progress to a post-secondary TVET program or a basic tutorial increased schooling program. These hoping to enroll in a better schooling establishment sit for the Complicated Check of Candidates (CTA), a college entrance examination that differs from the Unified Nationwide Check (UNT) taken by basic secondary college graduates.

TVET packages are provided in additional than 150 professions in fields equivalent to agriculture, enterprise, development, schooling, well being care, and business, amongst others. As at different ranges of the schooling system, MESRK controls the content material and methodology of all TVET coaching packages, creating State Obligatory Requirements that outline the themes and curricula that may be taught all through the nation. Applications usually comprise a mixture of sensible, on-the-job coaching and theoretical coursework. Curricula are modular, permitting college students to finish impartial models in any order, and are meant to arrange college students with the talents wanted to enter the labor market.

Publish-secondary Vocational Training

College students can be admitted to post-secondary technical and vocational packages after finishing basic or vocational higher secondary college. These post-secondary TVET packages usually final between two and three years.

Just like the vocational secondary stream, post-secondary TVET packages are fairly well-liked. In response to knowledge cited within the 2014 OECD overview of secondary schooling in Kazakhstan, 45 % of all college students coming into post-secondary establishments enrolled in technical and vocational packages in 2011.

After passing the required programs and coaching, college students passing a vocational examination or finishing a commencement mission are awarded a vocational diploma. As with some vocational higher secondary diplomas, these post-secondary diplomas are usually translated into English as a Diploma of Technical and Skilled Training. College students incomes a post-secondary vocational diploma typically enter the workforce or enroll on the whole tutorial increased schooling establishments.

Larger Training

Kazakhstan’s increased schooling system has modified dramatically since independence. In an try to create a better schooling system capable of meet the calls for of the nation’s rising market financial system, policymakers have progressively decreased the federal government’s function in financing and supervising the sector, adopting reforms that will extra carefully align the system with worldwide requirements. Their success has been blended. At occasions, reforms have moved too shortly or gone too far, exacerbating the issues they have been meant to resolve; whereas at others, change has moved too slowly, with authorities reformers discovering the Soviet legacy arduous to throw off.

Larger schooling in Kazakhstan has its beginnings within the Nineteen Twenties, shortly after the nation was integrated into the Soviet Union as an autonomous republic. Within the seven a long time that adopted, instructional authorities developed a better schooling system aimed primarily at creating technically competent specialists to assist the Soviet Union meet its financial, political, and cultural goals. In distinction to the analysis universities prevalent within the West, universities all through the Soviet Union centered virtually completely on educating. Most simple and utilized analysis was performed outdoors of universities in specialised institutes or academies, a lot of which have been situated outdoors of Kazakhstan itself.

Management over increased schooling throughout the Soviet period was additionally tightly centralized, permitting authorities planners in Moscow or Alma-Ata, as Almaty was identified previous to 1993, to find out the themes provided and the variety of seats out there in accordance with Soviet or republican goals. Within the Kazakh SSR, most increased schooling establishments have been narrowly centered on both engineering, to help the oil and gasoline business, or pedagogy, to attain the Soviet Union’s objective of common literacy. Graduates of those establishments obtained state diplomas that assured them employment in authorities ministries or state-owned enterprises.

Though the Soviet Union developed a stable community of establishments—55 by independence—demand for college seats within the Kazakh SSR nonetheless far exceeded provide. In 1989, there have been 226 candidates for each 100 college seats. Entry to increased schooling was particularly restricted for a lot of the nation’s giant rural inhabitants. Soviet-era universities within the Kazakh SSR have been virtually universally established in city facilities or in resource-rich areas.

Independence introduced disruption. With its income falling, the federal government handed the Legislation on Larger Training in 1993, which for the primary time legalized the institution of personal universities. It additionally altered funding and possession rules for public universities. The federal government launched tuition charges at beforehand free public universities and bought shares in a handful of them to personal buyers. This drive to denationalise the funding and possession of upper schooling establishments represented a big departure from the Soviet period when the federal government was virtually fully accountable for funding and administration.

These modifications led to a speedy proliferation of personal increased schooling establishments. Over the subsequent decade, the variety of universities greater than tripled, peaking at greater than 180 in 2001, with almost all the progress pushed by non-public establishments. Enrollment took barely longer to extend, remaining largely stagnant till the late Nineties. Nevertheless, because the financial system began to warmth up across the begin of the brand new millennium, younger Kazakhstanis started to flood into universities. By the 2005/06 tutorial 12 months, round 775,000 college students have been enrolled in increased schooling establishments, greater than double the quantity a decade earlier.

Larger Training in Transition: High quality, Governance, and Internalization Reforms

The speedy rise within the variety of non-public increased schooling establishments was not accompanied by an analogous improve within the funding for or rigor of oversight and high quality assurance mechanisms. In consequence, schooling high quality in most of the nation’s universities deteriorated sharply, whereas incidences of corruption and tutorial fraud rose quickly. Bribes from non-public and public college directors reportedly helped sway the selections of ministry officers accountable for licensing and testifying increased schooling establishments; potential college students additionally used bribes to affect college admissions officers. Deception even unfold to labs and lecture halls, the place dishonest was reportedly rampant. The SPED 2011-2020 famous that “Corruption has been a critical latent issue encompassing your entire system of upper schooling in Kazakhstan.”

With the booming financial system putting the nation’s public funds on a extra stable footing, these challenges prompted the federal government to introduce expansive reforms geared toward enhancing and modernizing the nation’s increased schooling system. To deal with issues about corruption, the federal government launched standardized nationwide college entrance examinations, and for college freshmen, obligatory lessons designed to discourage dishonest.

The federal government additionally tightened high quality assurance and accreditation processes. Starting within the early 2000s, it started introducing stricter increased schooling licensing rules and rolling out a system of voluntary accreditation. In 2006, it explicitly launched an “optimization coverage” geared toward enhancing the general high quality of the upper schooling system by strictly monitoring high quality requirements and forcing low-performing establishments to merge or shut.

To date, the latter coverage has proved efficient. From 2005 to 2020, the variety of universities in Kazakhstan declined by almost a 3rd, falling from greater than 180 to 125—33 public and 92 non-public, in keeping with authorities statistics. The federal government hopes that improved oversight and high quality requirements will finally scale back that quantity to 100.

Maybe additionally driving the shuttering of establishments, which right this moment are largely financed by pupil tuition charges, was declining demand for increased schooling. The variety of Kazakhstanis between the ages of 20 and 24 fell by a 3rd between 2010 and 2020, from greater than 1.6 million in 2010 to 1.1 million in 2020. In consequence, college enrollment has additionally declined, falling by greater than 40 % from its peak in 2005/06 to round 460,000 in 2015/16. Though numbers have since stabilized, policymakers anticipate college enrollment to say no or stay stagnant till 2025.

The federal government has additionally launched into different vital reforms, most notably these geared toward aligning the nation’s increased schooling system with worldwide requirements. In 2010, Kazakhstan turned the 47^th signatory of the Bologna Course of and the primary Central Asian nation to hitch the European Larger Training Space (EHEA). Its long-planned accession—Kazakhstan signed the Lisbon Recognition Conference in 1999—was accompanied by vital modifications to the nation’s increased schooling system, together with the restructuring of its qualification and credit score system, the introduction of exterior accreditation companies, and a gradual enlargement of institutional autonomy.

Regardless of these reforms, a lot work stays to be executed. Even after conceding a few of its oversight authority—authorizing boards of trustees in 2007 and relinquishing a few of its management over curriculum content material—MESRK nonetheless tightly regulates administrative processes and tutorial choices at each private and non-private increased schooling establishments. It nonetheless establishes the set of packages and specialties that universities can provide, a listing often called the Classifier of Specialties of Undergraduate and Postgraduate Training, and units State Obligatory Requirements (SCS) that prescribe giant parts of curriculum content material. MESRK additionally enforces standardized school promotion schedules and units limits to the quantity of tuition public universities can cost, amongst different administrative rules. Though the federal government handed a legislation in 2018 pledging to additional broaden the monetary, organizational, and tutorial autonomy of upper schooling establishments, the final word affect of the legislation stays to be seen.

Larger Training Establishments

MESRK classifies all increased schooling establishments in Kazakhstan, each private and non-private, into completely different classes in keeping with the variety of packages taught and diploma of analysis performed. An establishment’s classification is often decided when it first receives its working license from MESRK, though non-public establishments increasing their program choices or analysis output can apply to MESRK for recertification and reclassification. An establishment’s classification has vital implications for its tutorial and administrative autonomy. In response to a 2017 report from the Training, Audiovisual and Tradition Govt Company (EACEA), “Relying on their standing, the establishments can decide necessities for admission, implement self-developed teaching programs, use their very own guidelines and rules in instructional, scientific and methodological actions, and concern their very own diplomas of schooling.”

Whereas institutional classifications proceed to evolve, on the whole, the federal government at present categorizes increased schooling establishments in Kazakhstan into the next varieties:

• Nationwide analysis universities, which supply undergraduate and post-graduate packages in a variety of disciplines. They’re anticipated to have interaction closely in fundamental and utilized analysis and are granted vital autonomy in creating their very own tutorial packages. In response to authorities knowledge, as of the beginning of the 2020/21 tutorial 12 months, there are simply two nationwide analysis universities, Al-Farabi Kazakh Nationwide College and Satbayev College, each situated in Almaty.
• Nationwide universities, that are main public educating and analysis establishments providing packages in a minimal of three disciplines. Nationwide universities are so designated by presidential decree. There are at present 9 nationwide universities situated completely within the nation’s two largest cities, Almaty (six) and Nur-Sultan (three).
• Analysis universities and universities, which in the latest authorities statistics have been handled collectively, are the most typical kind of upper schooling establishment. Present in each area of the nation, there are a complete of 83. These establishments provide government-approved packages in a minimal of three disciplines. As is the case with nationwide analysis universities and nationwide universities, these establishments have in depth analysis mandates.
• Academies, that are specialised establishments providing first- and second-cycle packages in a single or two disciplines. There are at present 17 academies working all through the nation.
• Institutes and their equivalents, equivalent to conservatories, increased colleges, or increased specialised colleges and schools, which supply instructional packages in additional specialised, skilled disciplines. Fourteen institutes at present prepare Kazakhstani college students in engineering, music, educating, and different disciplines.

These establishments are owned and operated by a number of distinct entities, together with the nationwide authorities (which owns 9 establishments), regional governments (31), non-civil authorities ministries (13), worldwide organizations (1), public-private joint-stock corporations (16), non-public organizations (54), and, a class distinctive to Nazarbayev College, Autonomous Group of Training (1). Personal establishments, which within the newest authorities statistics embrace the joint-stock universities owned partly by each non-public and public entities, make up almost three-quarters (74 %) of all establishments in Kazakhstan and enroll greater than two-thirds of all college students (68 %).

Kazakhstani increased schooling establishments provide full-time, part-time, night, and distant examine in three principal languages: Kazakh, Russian, and English. As of the start of the 2020/21 tutorial 12 months, almost two-thirds (65 %) of all college students have been enrolled in Kazakh-medium packages, 29 % in Russian-medium packages, and 6 % in English-medium packages.

Regardless of excessive enrollment ratios—Kazakhstan’s tertiary gross enrollment ratio (GER) reached an astonishing 71 % in 2020—entry to the nation’s increased schooling establishments for a lot of eligible youth stays restricted. Many rural younger individuals are bodily separated from the nation’s universities by lengthy distances, as most increased schooling establishments are situated in city facilities. In actual fact, almost half are in simply three cities: 41 in Almaty, 15 in Nur-Sultan, and 10 in Shymkent. In consequence, broad disparities in entry exist between city and rural college students. In 2015, 40 % of city Kazakhstanis between the age of 18 and 22 have been enrolled in increased schooling, in contrast with simply 14 % of rural Kazakhstanis.

The analysis capability of most Kazakhstani universities additionally stays restricted, partly a legacy of the Soviet separation of educating and analysis. Even right this moment, school members often carry heavy educating hundreds and administrative duties, leaving them little time to conduct analysis. Critics additionally contend that school hiring and promotion choices, which they allege are sometimes formed by nepotism and a weak tradition of meritocracy, do nothing to incentivize analysis actions. Though the SPED 2011-2020 introduced the federal government’s intention to extend the proportion of school members publishing in prime worldwide journals, official statistics recommend that little progress has been made.

Regardless of these challenges, a lot of Kazakhstani universities appeared among the many prime 1,000 within the QS World College Rankings 2021, together with Al-Farabi Kazakh Nationwide College (165), L.N. Gumilyov Eurasian Nationwide College (357), and Auezov South Kazakhstan College (490). Whereas these QS rankings are spectacular, Kazakhstani establishments carried out much less effectively on the opposite main worldwide rankings. No Kazakhstani college seems among the many prime 1,000 in both the Instances Larger Training World College Rankings 2021 or the Educational Rating of World Universities (ARWU) 2020.

College Admissions

To be admitted to increased schooling establishments in Kazakhstan, college students will need to have efficiently accomplished secondary schooling, both the overall tutorial stream or the vocational stream, and should take considered one of two nationally standardized college entrance examinations. College students finishing the overall tutorial secondary stream, who make up the vast majority of all college college students, sit for the Unified Nationwide Check (UNT).⁹ Administered by the Nationwide Testing Heart (NTC) of the MESRK, the UNT was launched at the beginning of the 2003/04 tutorial 12 months in an try to cut back corruption and improve the transparency of the college admissions course of by minimizing the arbitrary discretion of college admissions officers. Since 2017, the UNT has included 5 topic examinations, three of that are obligatory: mathematical literacy (numeracy), studying literacy, and the historical past of Kazakhstan.

College students who graduated from a TVET secondary college or a secondary college educating in a language apart from Kazakh or Russian sit for another entrance examination, often called the Complicated Testing of Candidates (CTA). Worldwide college students making use of to review in a Kazakh college are usually exempt from each UNT and CTA examinations. As a substitute, universities set their very own admission requirements for worldwide college students.

College students who rating excessive on the UNT are assured a seat at a public college and could also be issued government-funded benefit scholarships. College students can use these grants to enroll in packages recognized by the federal government as important to the nation’s growth and taught in establishments accredited by one of many acknowledged accrediting our bodies.

Nevertheless, these benefit scholarships have been criticized as an inefficient use of presidency assets. The 2017 OECD overview of Kazakhstan’s increased schooling system talked about above famous that “State grants to college students, usually awarded on the idea of educational benefit, typically pay the tutoring and residing prices of scholars who would possible have the ability to meet these prices utilizing their household’s or their very own assets.”

This misallocation of funds exacerbates the issues attributable to low ranges of public spending on increased schooling. Authorities expenditure on tertiary schooling was simply .3 % of GDP in 2019, effectively under the OECD common of 1.6 %. That very same 2017 OECD overview famous that way more of Kazakhstan’s increased schooling expenditure comes from non-public sources than the OECD common—almost 70 % in 2014, in contrast with 31 % amongst all OECD international locations. It concluded that low public spending has weakened the standard of educating and analysis at Kazakhstani universities and compelled establishments to lean closely on tuition charges for financing.

The Tertiary Diploma Construction

The Bologna Course of introduced vital modifications to Kazakhstan’s increased schooling system. Previous to the reforms, levels provided in Kazakhstani universities nonetheless resembled these prevalent throughout the Soviet period. These included lengthy specialist diplomas, lasting wherever from 4 to 5 and a half years, after which college students might enroll in superior examine packages such because the Kandidat Nauk, or Candidate of Sciences, which generally required a further three years of examine. College students incomes a Kandidat Nauk might then proceed their research and analysis in a better doctoral program often called the Doktor Nauk, or Physician of Sciences.

Most of those credentials have been phased out by 2010 and changed by shorter, three-cycle {qualifications}. The three-cycle construction was additional formalized in 2012, when Kazakhstan launched a Nationwide {Qualifications} Framework (NQF) aligned with the European {Qualifications} Framework (EQF). Regardless of these modifications, sure medical packages stay exceptions, requiring 5 or extra years of examine and resulting in a specialist diploma.

Immediately, packages in all three cycles are required to incorporate knowledgeable apply element, whether or not trainer coaching or work placement. Ranging from 2021, accredited private and non-private universities will even have the ability to design and award their very own diplomas. As famous above, previous to 2021, all public universities and people non-public universities accredited by a acknowledged accreditation company awarded standardized state diplomas bearing the MESRK seal.

Immediately, the overwhelming majority of scholars are enrolled in first-cycle, or bachelor’s diploma, packages. In response to the Committee on Statistics of the Ministry of Nationwide Economic system, within the 2018/19 tutorial 12 months, round 92 % of scholars have been enrolled in undergraduate packages, 7 % in grasp’s diploma packages, and simply 1 %, or a bit below 5,000 college students, in doctoral packages.

Credit score System and Grading Scale

Most Kazakhstani universities right this moment use a novel nationwide credit score system, though lately increasingly establishments have begun to incorporate or to even completely use European Credit score Switch and Accumulation System (ECTS) credit. Below the Kazakh credit score system, one credit score unit corresponds to 45 examine hours, which generally comprise 15 hours of classroom examine and 30 hours of impartial pupil work per week.

Universities in Kazakhstan typically use letter grades and a corresponding 4.0 grading scale. College students usually have to earn a cumulative grade level common (GPA) of two.0 or above to graduate. At most establishments, bachelor’s and grasp’s college students graduating with a cumulative GPA of three.5 or above are issued diplomas with honors.

Regardless of the present prevalence of this distinctive credit score and grading system, the federal government continues to be anticipated to require all establishments to transition to the ECTS system, below which a full tutorial 12 months would come with 60 ECTS credit or 1,800 tutorial hours, a while sooner or later. In preparation for this alteration, many establishments publish conversion tables that specify how Kazakhstani credit and grades are to be transformed into their ECTS equivalents. At most establishments, conversion coefficients from Kazakhstani credit into ECTS credit usually fluctuate between 1.5 to 1.8 nationwide credit to 1 ECTS credit score.

First Cycle

Kazakhstan adopted a shortened first-cycle diploma program sooner than it did the opposite two cycles. Within the 2004/05 tutorial 12 months, Kazakhstan launched a four-year bachelor’s diploma program (diplom bakalavra), which changed the longer Soviet-era Diploma of Specialist (diplom spetsialista). The bakalavra often requires a minimal of 4 years of examine and the completion of 129 Kazakh credit (or 240 ECTS credit), at the very least 6 of that are earned in skilled apply. All college students should additionally sit and go a state examination on the historical past of Kazakhstan. College students take one other exterior examination of their last 12 months of examine, the Exterior Evaluation of Educational Achievements (EAAA), a competency evaluation administered by the Nationwide Testing Heart (NTC) of MESRK and geared toward evaluating college students’ mastery of the data that’s fundamental to their main discipline of examine (the EAAA is mentioned in additional element under). To graduate, college students should write and defend a thesis or go a complete examination.

MESRK provides establishments much less management over bakalavra packages than they do for second- and third-cycle packages. As of 2015, establishments have been capable of develop as much as 55 % of the content material of the bakalavra curricula, though all packages should observe the rules set by the State Obligatory Requirements (SCS). In keeping with these pointers, college students are often required to go a minimal variety of obligatory element (CC) programs, that are required by the federal government, and college element (UC) programs. Required programs are additional divided into basic schooling self-discipline (GED), core self-discipline (CD), and main self-discipline (MD) programs, and embrace programs in each the Kazakh and Russian languages. Regardless of these strict program necessities, college students are often nonetheless given the liberty to enroll in a lot of elective element (EC) programs.

Second Cycle

Each post-graduate cycles have been launched in 2010, following Kazakhstan’s signing of the Bologna Accord. To be admitted to a second-cycle program, the diplom magistra or grasp’s diploma, college students should possess a bakalavra. They have to additionally sit for 2 entrance examinations: one administered by the college within the self-discipline they want to pursue; and one other, a overseas language take a look at, administered by the NTC.

Grasp’s diploma packages usually require between one and two years of classroom examine, sensible coaching, and analysis. One-year packages, also known as skilled grasp’s, are usually extra sensible in nature, requiring the completion of 24 credit (60 ECTS credit). Two-year packages are often extra analysis intensive, requiring 55 credit (120 ECTS credit) and the writing and protection of a thesis. Grasp’s college students should additionally sit for a subject-specific EAAA examination within the last 12 months of this system.

Universities are granted way more autonomy—they will decide as much as 70 % of the content material of their grasp’s diploma packages. The Classifier of Specialties of Undergraduate and Postgraduate Training at present permits Kazakhstani universities to supply diplom magistra packages in a wide range of completely different scientific and pedagogic disciplines.

Third Cycle

Third-cycle packages embrace skilled and analysis doctorates. To be admitted, college students should possess a grasp’s diploma; college students pursuing a medical doctorate will need to have accomplished their medical residency. All college students should additionally sit for an entrance examination administered by the college of their specialty and a overseas language examination administered by the NTC.

Doctorates require a minimal of three years of superior coursework, analysis, {and professional} apply, together with the completion of a minimal of 75 credit (180 ECTS credit). Applications often require that half of those credit be earned in theoretical coaching and coursework, and 6 earned in skilled apply. The rest, barely lower than half, are usually guided analysis credit, earned as college students put together to jot down and defend a dissertation.

Public universities educate the overwhelming majority of doctoral packages and award the overwhelming majority of doctoral levels. Like grasp’s diploma packages, doctoral packages are provided in many various scientific and pedagogical disciplines. MESRK regulates doctoral packages flippantly, granting establishments management over as much as 90 % after all content material.

Skilled Training

As talked about above, the construction of many medical packages nonetheless resembles these of Soviet-era {qualifications}. These packages embrace well being and social welfare medication, veterinary medication, and veterinary sanitation, all of which result in the award of a specialist diploma and require at the very least 5 years of examine and the completion of 167 credit. Even medical packages which have adopted diploma titles that extra carefully resemble the terminology used for different post-Bologna first-cycle packages retain this older construction. Lately launched medical {qualifications}, such because the Bachelor of Medication (medïcïna bakalavri) and the Bachelor of Dentistry (Stomatologïya bakalavri), nonetheless usually require 5 years of examine.

Superior medical coaching additionally often differs from different second- and third-cycle {qualifications}. It’s typically performed by means of residency packages of various size, on the finish of which graduates are awarded a Certificates of Residency (Svidetelstvo ob okonchanii rezidenturi).

High quality Assurance and Accreditation

Larger schooling accreditation and high quality assurance in Kazakhstan is advanced and nonetheless evolving. Though it continues to bear the imprints of the nation’s legacy of centralized state management, lately, the federal government has relinquished a big diploma of its oversight duties to exterior our bodies consistent with the suggestions of worldwide organizations.

High quality administration in Kazakhstan begins effectively earlier than an establishment opens its doorways. Earlier than any educating can happen, MESRK should consider and license proposed tutorial establishments. MESRK largely bases its licensing choices on its analysis of the detailed utility and supporting documentation submitted by the representatives of the proposed establishment. MESRK solely points licenses to establishments discovered to be in compliance with the requirements set by the federal government relating to employees {qualifications}, funds, infrastructure, pupil companies, governance preparations, and program choices, amongst others.

MESRK continues to observe tutorial establishments even after they obtain their license to function. Till lately, this oversight was virtually fully carried out by means of a state-led course of often called attestation, though latest reforms have shifted many points of the method to exterior accreditation companies.

Managed by the Committee for Management of Training and Science (CCES) of MESRK, institutional attestation is designed to make sure that an establishment’s instructional infrastructure, school {qualifications}, educating high quality, and studying outcomes, amongst others, meet State Obligatory Requirements. Establishments that don’t meet these requirements have their licenses revoked and should stop working. Whereas lately the federal government has exempted increasingly increased schooling establishments from attestation, sure state-run army academies and different specialised establishments are nonetheless topic to the method at five-year intervals.

As a part of the attestation course of, CCES considers pupil scores on the Exterior Assessments of Educational Achievements (EAAAs). As talked about above, the Nationwide Testing Heart (NTC) of MESRK administers the EAAA, a subject-specific competency evaluation, to college students within the last years of their undergraduate and postgraduate packages. These competency examinations, that are unusual internationally, have been criticized as incompatible with the precept of college autonomy and as detrimental to the standard of the nation’s increased schooling sector, as they skew educating towards preparation for the examinations. Whereas college students failing a earlier model of those examinations risked expulsion from their college, right this moment, the outcomes of the EEEA don’t affect college students’ tutorial development. As a substitute, the outcomes are utilized by CCES to judge the efficiency of educational establishments and their eligibility for attestation.

Essentially the most vital change to the nation’s high quality assurance mechanisms lately has been its embrace of voluntary accreditation performed by exterior accrediting our bodies. Whereas MESRK piloted, then shortly walked again, a model of voluntary accreditation within the early 2000s, it solely began to acknowledge exterior accreditation companies after 2010, when Kazakhstan turned a full member of the European Larger Training Space (EHEA). Guided by the rules laid down within the Requirements and Pointers for High quality Assurance within the European Larger Training Space (ESG), the muse for high quality assurance all through the EHEA, the SPED 2011-2020 referred to as for the gradual switch of high quality assurance duties from the MESRK’s attestation course of to a system of voluntary accreditation performed by impartial accreditation companies. Shortly thereafter, MESRK established a Nationwide Register of Accreditation Our bodies modeled on the European High quality Assurance Register for Larger Training (EQAR), which registers European high quality assurance companies complying with the ESG.

Since 2010, MESRK has moved to incentivize accreditation. The federal government has restricted public funding to establishments or packages accredited by one of many companies listed on the Nationwide Register of Accreditation Our bodies. It has additionally exempted instructional organizations from state attestation procedures so long as they’ve acquired and keep institutional or program accreditation. In 2017, it even prohibited unaccredited establishments from issuing official state diplomas. These measures have proved efficient. As of 2020, 92 % of Kazakhstani increased schooling establishments had obtained institutional accreditation, and 96 % had obtained program, or specialised, accreditation.

MESRK at present acknowledges 11 accreditation our bodies: six Kazakhstani companies, which may accredit each establishments and particular person tutorial packages; and 5 worldwide companies, that are authorized to accredit particular packages solely. At the moment, the biggest accrediting our bodies are each based mostly in Kazakhstan: the Unbiased Company for High quality Assurance in Training (IQAA) and the Unbiased Company for Accreditation and Score (IAAR). Larger schooling establishments are free to decide on which of the acknowledged companies they want to overview their establishments or packages.

Though impartial accreditation companies have assumed a lot of MESRK’s former high quality assurance duties vis-à-vis increased schooling establishments and packages, MESRK, consistent with ESG pointers, retains final duty for the regulation of those impartial companies. MESRK initially evaluates after which recertifies accrediting our bodies each 5 years. Nonetheless, it permits these companies broad latitude to develop their very own accreditation requirements, supplied the requirements adjust to these established within the ESG. Though various by company, accreditation procedures usually embrace the analysis of college self-assessments and on-site visits.

At the moment, the Nationwide Register of Accreditation Our bodies, in addition to a listing of accredited tutorial establishments and packages, will be discovered on the web site of the Bologna Course of and Educational Mobility Heart, a subdivision of MESRK.

Pattern Paperwork

Click on right here for a PDF file of the tutorial paperwork referred to under:

• Certificates of Normal Secondary Training (Attestat o srednem obshchem obrazovanii)
• Diploma of Technical and Skilled Training
• Bachelor’s Diploma (diplom bakalavra)
• Bachelor of Medication (medïcïna bakalavri)
• Diploma of Specialist (diplom spetsialista)
• Grasp’s Diploma (diplom magistra)
• Doctorate (physician)

1. As measured by buying energy parity (PPP) in present worldwide {dollars}.

2. Though not a member of the OECD, Kazakhstan cooperates carefully with the group on a lot of home and regional growth initiatives. Kazakhstan’s comparatively excessive per capita GDP—the Worldwide Financial Fund’s (IMF’s) 2021 estimates rank it the 52^nd highest on the planet—make comparisons between Kazakhstan and OECD member states each informative and customary. The OECD, in its many stories and analyses of Kazakhstan and its instructional system, steadily indexes the nation in opposition to the OECD common.

3. As a supply of outbound degree-seeking college students, Kazakhstan trails solely the extra acquainted giants: China, India, Germany, Vietnam, South Korea, France, and the US.

4. Scholar mobility knowledge from completely different sources equivalent to UNESCO, the Institute of Worldwide Training, and the governments of varied international locations could also be inconsistent, in some instances exhibiting considerably completely different numbers of worldwide college students. This lack of consistency is because of a lot of elements, together with knowledge seize methodology, definitions of worldwide pupil, and sorts of mobility captured (credit score, diploma, and many others.). The coverage of WENR is to not favor any given supply over one other, however to be clear about what we’re reporting and to footnote numbers that will increase questions on discrepancies.

5. The OECD report additionally recognized the nation’s restrictive pupil visa insurance policies as a deterrent to potential worldwide college students. At the moment, the Ministry of Training and Science (MESRK) publishes an annual checklist of nations eligible to ship worldwide college students to Kazakhstan the next tutorial 12 months. This course of injects vital ranges of uncertainty into the examine plans of potential worldwide college students who from 12 months to 12 months can by no means make sure whether or not MESRK will deem their nation eligible to ship college students.

6. The 4 particular standing cities are Almaty (Kazakhstan’s industrial middle and its most populous metropolis), Baikonur, Nur-Sultan (the capital, often called Astana between 1998 and 2019), and Shymkent.

7. Additionally translated as State Obligatory Training Requirements (SCES).

8. Additionally translated as Exterior Evaluation of Academic Achievements (EAEA).

9. Additionally translated as Widespread Nationwide Check (CNT).