Speech by the Director of the Foundation for Sustainable Development of Education Daniyar Toktarbayev at the International Scientific and Practical Conference of AEO “Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools” “The Prosperity of Rural Schools is the Key to the...

Introduction

          I would like to thank the management and staff of AEO "Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools" for organizing a large-scale scientific and practical conference and the opportunity to participate here.

          This is the second year that the NIS conference has welcomed participants from rural schools. Last year I was one of those who presented certificates of participation in the project to the directors of support schools. Then in my speech I voiced my dream: “Today there are 22 rural schools in the hall. I believe and hope that one day this entire large hall will be filled with representatives of rural schools.” Then I could not imagine that this would happen so quickly, and today, only a year later, I am speaking in front of an audience that is almost entirely represented by rural schools. This is inspiring!

Rural school sustainable development model

         The Foundation for Sustainable Development of Education implements projects that help ensure equal access to quality education, regardless of social status, age and territorial affiliation of a person. In turn, FSDE is a platform for the integration of Society, Government and Business according to the principles of the concept of sustainable development.

         For example, it is worth reviewing the project to develop support schools. Thus, the project is sponsored by private sponsorship funds, namely, the renovation of school equipment is provided by the Foundation "Qazaqstan Halqyna" (funds from business). In turn, AITAS Holding finances the operational and administrative costs of the project. Local executive bodies provide infrastructure issues: preparation of school buildings, Internet, lighting in classrooms, as well as local administrative support. AEO "Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools" and its centers (Center of Excellence, Center for pedagogical measurements, Center for Educational Programmes) provide methodological support to schools and a teacher training program. FSDE acts as a project operator who coordinates operational activities.

         If you plunge into history, then all the activities of FSDE began with the project “Rural School powered by NIS”, which was launched jointly with AEO NIS in 2019. Then the first rural school in the Katon-Karagai region was included in the project. Then other schools in the East Kazakhstan and Akmola regions also joined. The development of schools was organized in three stages.

First. Improvement of teachers' qualifications.

Second. Phased renewal of the material base of rural schools.

Third. Methodological support for schools for 3 years.

         Today the project covers 6 rural schools. The schools' facilities were updated in the amount of about 1.5 billion tenge. And the teaching staff took part in more than 150 events on skills and new teaching technologies. Teachers from rural schools have completed numerous internships at Nazarbayev Intellectual schools. Today, these schools are connected to the methodological support program.

         Thanks to the successful results of schools from the “Rural School powered by NIS” project, the program received support from the Foundation "Qazaqstan Halqyna" in 2022. This made it possible to scale this experience to all 17 regions of Kazakhstan. Thus, in the first stage of the project in 2022, 17 schools were included - one from each region in order to test the project taking into account the characteristics of each region of the country. However, all the goals were achieved. Each project school and its staff understood the enormous responsibility to the entire education system, because whether scaling in the future depended on their results. Thus, in 2023, 62 schools have already been connected to the project, which are present at the conference today. There are plans to increase the number to 200 - one support school in each of the 169 districts and 27 single-industry towns of the country.

        It is worth noting that the creation of a network of rural support schools is only the first step in building a new education system. Support schools are not only points of growth for rural education. In the future, “magnet schools” will be linked to them, and together they will create a “support school – magnet school” complex - this is the second step. Today we are testing a similar mechanism with our partners, with the support of the Ministry of Education, in the Aktobe region. There, 3 magnet schools are attached to each support school. But this is only one of four “piloted” training modules that covered 134 small schools:

1. Streaming.

2. A support school teacher teaches at a magnet school.
3. Joint teaching by teachers of a support school and a magnet school.
4. Teaching without the Internet, but using digital solutions.

        At the same time, each school in the project received two updated classrooms from sponsors: 1) a science classroom (all natural Mathematical subjects), 2) a digital classroom.

        In the future, it is planned to scale the project based on a module that will show the greatest efficiency by the end of the pilot period.

        The third step will be the creation of educational districts with the connection of additional education organizations to the created complex “Rural School - Magnet School”. This should help create a system of seamless learning and development for any rural student. You need to understand that the question is not about legal subordination of structures, but only about a unified concept of child development and synchronicity in activities. But before this stage, we still have a lot of work to do on the first steps.

 

        Ecosystem of a support school: the FSDE model

        In the first block, I talked about the projects and activities of our foundation and partners. This is what project schools are already receiving or expecting in the near future. Three main areas: Training, Equipment and Support. But now I would like to dwell on the projects that we call “integration”, that is, those projects that project participants receive in addition from FSDE and partners.

        First, these are platforms for motivating and developing teachers. As I said, this conference from our partners, AEO NIS, has previously become such a traditional platform.

       I am also glad that in two weeks we will meet with you at the global conference on educational technologies EdCrunch in Almaty, where you will have the opportunity to learn the latest trends in the field of education and EdTech areas. Our foundation also acts as a sponsor and partner of EdCrunch, and invites all participants in our projects to participate in the conference free of charge.

       This year we have reached an agreement and cooperation with new partners.

 

​       First, this is the University of Massachusetts. This is one of the best universities in the world, which implements the MIT Global Teaching Labs program - an internship for its best students in different parts of the planet. Kazakhstan was represented in this program only twice: these were NIS and Tamos schools. And today we are proud to announce that for the first time, along with such educational institutions as Haileybury School in Astana and Almaty, Tamos Space School in Astana and Shoqan Private School in Almaty, a rural public school - secondary school named after S.Lastayev in Katon-Karagai district, East Kazakhstan region, was included in the Short List of the program. It is worth noting that this particular school became the first in our “Rural School powered by NIS” project, and today we call it a graduate of our project. At the same time, we continue to support our school and attract projects of this kind.

        Another project that we brought to this school was the “Circle”. You may know that such a project operated successfully in Russia, when Moscow top managers and top specialists went to the countryside to teach rural children. Due to the war in Ukraine, many of the project team went abroad and today live in Germany, Georgia and the Netherlands. The project team contacted us and voiced their desire to implement another training in Kazakhstan. And a month ago, strong IT managers from large European companies (Berlin and Amsterdam) came to us and taught our children web programming. Imagine, they traveled 6500 km to teach children!

        Continuing the topic of digital literacy and skills training, we were looking for a reliable and systematic partner, which we found in the international computer Academy Step. This company has been operating since 1999 and today is represented in 21 countries, has more than 100 branches and 2,900 teachers. As part of our agreement, STEP Academy took responsibility on its own to provide full training to two schools of our project: the secondary school in the village of Bestamak, Aktobe region, and the secondary school in the village of Aktogay, Karaganda region. If these schools show results and confirm our expectations, we plan to expand the program to other schools.

        Roboland is an international robotics festival. Last year we noticed that rural schools were almost not represented at these major competitions. There are several objective reasons for this. The main thing is that schools often do not have the necessary robotics kits for the preparation and participation of their team. This year we became partners of the Roboland festival and accompanied teams from our schools. The result was that more than 30 teams from rural schools reached the finals. These teams are going for experience, at a minimum, but of course we also expect victory.

 

        There is another championship in robotics – First. This is a kind of “Champions League” (like in football) among robotics competitions. Today we are working with a team of First representatives in Kazakhstan to implement their philosophy in our schools. Thus, the first project was the opening of a Fab Lab office at the Makinsk gymnasium school, which should become an impetus for the implementation of various school projects. We hope this is the first step towards introducing PBL (Project Based Learning) into the school curriculum. This is a “pilot” that we still plan to work on and observe. If the approach is successful, we plan to scale it to other schools that want to deepen project-based learning at home.

       I would like to finish my speech with a story about what kind of schools there are today in the Katon-Karagay district - we have 3 schools there.

      Uryl village secondary school is a unique place where 3 NIS school directors came from. Almost all of the school's teachers are graduates. The school entered the project in 2021, but shows very good results. Today the school has a modern library, which you will not find in many cities. This place has become a kind of community center for the entire village. Not only do children study there, but any resident of the village can read a book or spend time there.

      Secondary school named after S. Lastayev, which I already mentioned in my speech, launched a table tennis school. According to our agreement, the table tennis federation trained Physical education teachers all summer, and now they share their knowledge with both children and village residents. Every weekend the school holds its own championships. In the same school there is a modern folk music room. And Edil Khusainov teaches there, he is a teacher at the Kazakh National University of Arts (Astana). He comes once a month and conducts intensive classes. And the result was not long in coming - the children who studied notes for the first time won the Grand Prix of the international folk music festival last year.

       And finally, this is the school staff. We sometimes organize educational tours. There have already been trips to Astana, Almaty, and Kyrgyzstan. And the staff of our schools in the Katon-Karagai region always participates in these tours, they always adopt something and implement it in their schools. I am glad to see such openness to new things.

      In my speech, I tried to talk about the prospects for the development of your schools, which are included in our projects today. Explain that updating the material base and improving skills is only the beginning of a long and interesting journey. Our Foundation and partners are always ready to provide assistance if the school itself and its staff are ready for changes.

       Thank you!