The general education system in Kazakhstan includes 11 grades, all of which are free and compulsory. Grades 1 to 4 are considered to be primary education, grades 5-9 lower secondary and grades 11-12 higher secondary (UNESCO 2008). Enrolment rates in primary education are rather high but have been decreasing; gender parity is not an issue. Enrolment in secondary education is high and has remained constant for the past ten years (UIS 2009). In 2007, 47.6% of all general schools were teaching in the Kazakh language, 22.9%in Russian, 26.6% in both Kazakh and Russian, and 1.1% in other languages (ECOSOC 2008). Regional differences in terms of access and quality persist at all three levels of general education.

In the 2010-11 school year, 1,027 public primary schools and 5,340 public secondary schools were functioning in the country (Massimov n.d., MoES 2010). Net enrolment rate in primary education has decreased from 90% in 2008 to 88% in 2011 with gender parity, according to the Gender Parity Index (GPI), remaining at 0.99 for the same time period. Primary schooling is provided free, but parents typically pay for extra-curricular activities such as sports programmes, music programmes and sometimes lab equipment or other special material (Javoronkova 2006). Net enrolment rates in secondary education have been experiencing an increase from 85% in 2008 to 90% in 2011 (UIS 2009). The GPI has remained at 0.99 for the secondary school enrolment for the past 5 years. In secondary school, a small gap appears between children from the richest and the poorest income brackets, with the poorest children being 2.7% less likely to attend secondary schools. Education for children with special needs is a serious challenge for the Kazakh education system. It is not uncommon for children’s special needs go undiagnosed or unnoticed until primary school. There are very few education professionals trained to work with children with disabilities and technology and medical services are not widely available to schools to support these children (UNICEF 2008).

The main challenges concerning quality faced by Kazakhstan are in the area of learning outcomes and teacher qualifications in rural areas. The Monitoring Learning Assessments (MLA) survey, conducted in 2005, is one of the only available measures of the outputs of the country’s school system. The results show that about 75% of primary and secondary students show proficiency on the standards set by the assessment in both literacy and mathematics. However, students in rural areas perform significantly worse than students in urban areas: they scored 15% lower in numeracy and 14.5% lower in literacy than students in urban areas. Furthermore, students attending Russian language schools outperform students attending Kazakh schools. In 2005, Russian students scored 9.3% higher on numeracy and 12% higher on literacy than their Kazakh-speaking counterparts (UNICEF 2008). TIMSS-2007 evaluated grade 4 students’ knowledge of mathematics and science. The results showed that 19% of Kazakhstan students have achieved advanced level of knowledge in mathematics and 10% of Kazakhstan students have achieved advanced level of knowledge in sciences (MoES n.d.(b)).

While Kazakhstan has made progress in maintaining a low student-teacher ratio in general education – currently 11:1 – many obstacles still remain with regard to the qualification of teachers (ECOSOC 2008). About half of the teachers in both urban and rural schools have higher education and only 32% of urban teachers and 7% of teachers in rural schools have college qualifications. The poor achievement of children from urban areas in the MLA survey further highlights the urgent need to attract qualified teachers to remote areas of Kazakhstan. It is not uncommon for rural schools to engage in multi-grade teaching. In addition, educators are often required to teach subjects for which they do not have the necessary educational background (IBE 2007).

The MoES establishes the curriculums for both primary and secondary schools, with little choice left to individual schools. Departments of Education at the regional and district levels are responsible for: the establishment, organization and management of educational institutions, primary and secondary schools, as well as the provision of material and technical resources; the appointment of the heads of educational institutions; financing of educational institutions from the regional budget; enforcing compulsory secondary education; and executing the Information Technology Programme of secondary schools (IBE 2007).

The key policy changes to general education are outlined in the Concept of Education Development in the Republic of Kazakhstan up to 2015 and the State Programme of Development of Education in the Republic of Kazakhstan for 2005-10. The targeted areas include: changing from knowledge-centred to competence-based education; improving ICT, environment, economics, and language training programmes for students; establishing programmes for children with special needs; and developing a career-counselling system and job-placement mechanisms (UNESCO 2008). The government-approved Integrated National Programme on Healthy Life Promotion for 2008-16 will seek to expand youth friendly services and incorporate life skills into the secondary school curriculum (UNICEF 2008). A particular area of concern, which the Kazakh government has not fully addressed in its planning and strategy documents, is the almost stagnating share of national GDP allocated to education. Total state expenditure on education increased in 2009 to about 3%, which is an improvement over the 2005 allocation of 2.3% (UIS 2009). However, this rate remains the second lowest in Central Asia after Tajikistan (the poorest country in Central Asia) (UNICEF 2008).