Ministry of Education of Kazakhstan, as is well known, is making significant investments in the development of the country's education system.
The editorial board of FBRK has analysed which areas were the main focuses of the state's educational policy in 2024.
As a reminder, we previously examined the largest state procurements of eleven Kazakh ministries. You can read the previous material on the Ministry of Industry via this link.
The undoubted leader in terms of funding volume is the educational services programme for students of the Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools (NIS), aimed at preparing the International Baccalaureate curriculum. Last year, 41.96 billion tenge was allocated for these purposes, with a planned number of graduates of 2,056 people.
The second place in terms of funding volume was occupied by services for educating children at the Republican Physics and Mathematics Schools of Almaty and Astana with a budget of 1.83 billion tenge. The programme covered 1,586 children.
For educational services for the teaching and upbringing of gifted children, orphans, children with special educational needs, and children from low-income families in Shchuchinsk, 1.6 billion tenge was allocated. Similar programmes were implemented in Balkhash (1.16 billion tenge), the village of Nysanbek in the Turkestan region (1.04 billion tenge), and Konayev (1.04 billion tenge).
Significant funds were directed towards teacher professional development. The most extensive is the course "Implementation of a Value-Oriented Approach in Primary School" with a budget of 1.03 billion tenge, intended for 10,389 teachers. Calculated per teacher, the cost of training was approximately 99,000 tenge.
For educational services for teaching children using methods of humane pedagogy and techniques of person-centred learning in Almaty, 1.04 billion tenge was allocated for the education of 719 children.
Among other significant teacher professional development programmes, one can highlight the course for teachers of the Kazakh language and Kazakh literature (388.7 million tenge), the course "Development of Professional Competencies of Teachers in Inclusive Education" (396.8 million tenge), the course "Innovative Technologies in Teaching English" (345.6 million tenge), and the programme "Prevention of Violence in Educational Institutions" (499 million tenge).
The Ministry is also investing in the development of educational information systems — support for the Information System "National Educational Database" received 386.9 million tenge last year. To assess the effectiveness of the education system and its compliance with international standards, international comparative studies (PISA, TIMSS, ICILS, PIRLS, TALIS) were conducted with a budget of 748.2 million tenge.
The department paid particular attention to the expert review of textbooks and teaching-methodological complexes, allocating 351.3 million tenge for the analysis of 10,959 pages of materials. 679.6 million tenge was directed towards the procurement of educational and methodological aids and methodological recommendations.
The analysis of the Ministry of Education's state procurements shows that the main financial flows are directed towards education, support for vulnerable groups of the population, teacher professional development, and the development of the methodological base.
In the next material, the editorial board of FBRK will analyse the largest procurements of the Ministry of Culture and Information.
To be continued…