On textbooks, schools, and literature in Kazakh. An interview with Rauan Kenzhekanuly and Gulnar Bazhkenova.
According to Rauan Kenzhekhanyly, there are critical issues in education in the Turkestan, Mangystau, and Atyrau regions: these areas have the highest number of Kazakh schools, and they operate in three shifts.
“When it comes to quality, the problem is not in the Kazakh school, but in the poorly equipped school that lacks resources, teachers, good laboratories, and the ability to reach every child and provide them with a personalized learning experience. For instance, in the schools of the North Kazakhstan region, there are very few children. There, we achieve a different quality of education. Or in large cities, in NIS (National Innovation Schools). They rank among the top 10 countries in the world in terms of education quality. This is because these schools offer a full educational day plus extensive educational work and localization of international experience,” said the president of the International Kazakh Language Foundation.
Kenzhekhanyly added that only 40,000 children in the country study in special schools, which provide a full educational day. According to him, if the practices, methods, and materials used there were applied to the rest of the student body, they would also thrive.
Academic Performance of Kazakh-speaking Students
The results of the international PISA test showed that the academic performance of students in Kazakh classes is lower than that in Russian classes. The test is based on three categories that assess a student's functional literacy: reading, mathematical, and scientific literacy. Kenzhekhanyly emphasizes that these areas are crucial for shaping knowledge quality according to international standards.
“A child should be able to count, read, and understand what is happening in the world through physics, chemistry, and biology courses. There is a shortage of good teachers in these subjects. When we build a new school today in any part of Kazakhstan, the challenge is not to find a good teacher, but simply a teacher. Therefore, there is a task to nurture and cultivate modern educators,” Kenzhekhanyly reflects.
He is convinced that in the past, the weakest school graduates would enter pedagogical specialties, but now the requirements for students in pedagogical universities have become higher, along with teacher salaries.
The State of Kazakhstani Textbooks and Demand for Translated Books
Read also: A deputy spoke about the problems of teaching the Russian language in Kazakh schools.
“We have difficulties related to writing textbooks. Another issue is the regulation of how textbooks are written and how their expertise is conducted. There is an authorized body that deals with the expertise of textbooks. Publishers are given the right to write books based on the so-called state standards; there is a requirement that a child must know specific topics by the fifth grade. Based on this, publishers engage an author to create the textbook. This textbook is then sent for expertise to a center, which attracts another specialist who reads the textbook and provides feedback. This is insufficient to ensure good quality,” .
Kenzhekhanyly believes that the conclusion of a single expert is not enough, and that the expertise of a book should be conducted at multiple levels with public involvement.
He also added that there is no school for training textbook authors in the country, which exists in global practice:
“Being a textbook author is a great privilege and requires entirely different competencies. Having a PhD in a certain field does not mean that you can become a textbook author; it requires a completely different skill set. And this is taught, because a textbook is a technology, it is a spiral where we gradually load the textbook with content and new knowledge, taking into account the psychology of the child. Unfortunately, we lack these competencies,” he noted.
When asked about the activity of the Kazakh-speaking audience in reading books, Rauan responded that reader interest is steadily growing. Classic works—from the writings of Abai to global bestsellers like Stephen Covey—are the most popular.
“We frequently communicate with publishers who undertake commercial projects, and they have been operating for several years now. If there weren’t any readership or demand, they would certainly have stopped, since these are commercial projects for them. Within our platform, we closely monitor this, as we can see personal shelves. We have about half a million accounts in this electronic library. Out of these, 10,000 people have subscriptions and pay to access these books,” he shared.
He also emphasized that there is a shortage of textbooks in the natural and exact sciences, while there is no such issue in the humanities.