Will Longer Schooling Mean Better Education?
Will Longer Schooling Mean Better Education?
As Kazak schoolchildren prepare to spend an extra year in the classroom, NBCentralAsia experts fear the reform will yield few results unless it is accompanied by genuine improvements in the quality and breadth of education.
This week, Kazakstan’s education ministry confirmed its final schedule to phase in 12-year school education next year.
Around a hundred schools have already moved over to the new education system as part of a pilot project.
The new 12-year education system is a drive to make students more competitive at an international level by adding an extra year to the current 11-year programme. Pupils will now spend five years in primary education, five at secondary and the last two focusing on subjects that prepare them for a career or higher education.
Kazakstan plans to accede to the Bologna Declaration by 2010, which aims to ensure that education in each European country is at a similar level so that people can compete for jobs abroad.
Zinaida Savina, an expert on education and a school teacher with 30 years’ experience, is critical of the move and says that Kazakstan is only making an outward show of conforming to western standards.
She is also concerned that 12-year schooling may not fit in with local customs such as early marriage.
“We are chasing western education standards without taking our own well-tried methods and our people’s mentality into account,” said Savina. “Age considerations and national and regional characteristics have not been taken into account.”
NBCentralAsia political observer Daur Dosybiev is in no doubt that Kazakstan’s education system needs to be reformed, but feels the changes being introduced next year will made no difference to educational standards unless schools also offer a better quality of teaching and an expanded curriculum.
“Actually, there is no difference between studying for 11 years or 12 if [pupils] are in a overcrowded, poorly-equipped classrooms as in the average Kazak district school, where internet access is still a rarity,” said Dosybiev.
(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)
This week, Kazakstan’s education ministry confirmed its final schedule to phase in 12-year school education next year.
Around a hundred schools have already moved over to the new education system as part of a pilot project.
The new 12-year education system is a drive to make students more competitive at an international level by adding an extra year to the current 11-year programme. Pupils will now spend five years in primary education, five at secondary and the last two focusing on subjects that prepare them for a career or higher education.
Kazakstan plans to accede to the Bologna Declaration by 2010, which aims to ensure that education in each European country is at a similar level so that people can compete for jobs abroad.
Zinaida Savina, an expert on education and a school teacher with 30 years’ experience, is critical of the move and says that Kazakstan is only making an outward show of conforming to western standards.
She is also concerned that 12-year schooling may not fit in with local customs such as early marriage.
“We are chasing western education standards without taking our own well-tried methods and our people’s mentality into account,” said Savina. “Age considerations and national and regional characteristics have not been taken into account.”
NBCentralAsia political observer Daur Dosybiev is in no doubt that Kazakstan’s education system needs to be reformed, but feels the changes being introduced next year will made no difference to educational standards unless schools also offer a better quality of teaching and an expanded curriculum.
“Actually, there is no difference between studying for 11 years or 12 if [pupils] are in a overcrowded, poorly-equipped classrooms as in the average Kazak district school, where internet access is still a rarity,” said Dosybiev.
(News Briefing Central Asia draws comment and analysis from a broad range of political observers across the region.)
