Parents International and Teacher Training in Kazakhstan

As Parents International, we are currently engaged in a variety of EU-funded projects which align with our core missions: parental engagement, education for democracy, cyberbullying prevention, and healthier and safer environment for children. One such projects is EFFEct. We are also engaged in a continuous activity on the ground to promote the advancing of those core missions, often travelling outside Europe.

Last month, we received an invitation to visit Kazakhstan and present our work at their Teacher Summit. The event, organised by the BI Group, took place on 28 March in the dynamically developing city of Atyrau, on the border between Europe and Asia, in front of an audience of about 600 teachers and school leaders.

What made it so special is that this year teachers and school leaders of traditional state schools were allowed to participate in the Teacher Summit for the first time. On the other hand, about half of those in attendance came from the innovative network of BINOM Schools.

BINOM’s Model for Innovation and Education Infrastructure

Our presentation introduced the research-informed approaches our organisation and projects implement, and it included practice-oriented information about relevant project outcomes, including the EFFEct results. We also included a short briefing on some of our ongoing projects: Participate, which focuses on cyberbullying prevention, BioBeo, concentrating on the integration of Bioeconomy in education, and Drone, that aims at promoting teacher and student digital literacy education.

Effectiveness and efficiency, combined with innovation, is very much in line with the approach the BI Group has to their schools. We could tell that the audience was very attentive and deeply engaged. The company has a major role in building new living spaces to meet the increasing demand for housing in Kazakhstan, a country with a rapidly growing population and lots of young families. When BI Group builds a new housing estate, they also build the schools for the future population of the area.

BI Group emphasise state-of-art provisions when they design their schools. After completion of the buildings, they receive the same subsidy from the state as state schools and operate schools for the first five years. During this period, they invest heavily in updating the knowledge, skills and competences of their teachers. Every second Saturday is designated as training days. After the 5-year period, the state takes over the operating of the school. As a result of investment in both infrastructure and human resources by BI Group, at the time of the handover, these schools are at a much higher level professionally than others.

Capacity Building and Teacher Training in Kazakhstan

BI Group, being a for-profit company, has a high level of interest in effectiveness and efficiency. Their main stake in this endeavour is to increase the quality of schooling in the country, and they have identified teacher training in Kazakhstan as one of the key elements to invest in.

This is why our training team has already visited Kazakhstan multiple times and conducted hands-on, large-scale teacher training in Kazakhstan, working with BINOM’s teams in the capital city of Astana and in Atyrau. The latter also included training of trainers, with the objective of facilitating capacity building in the country. The recent summit was aiming at raising awareness of current trends and local school successes among staff of traditional state schools, hoping to also make it possible for the newly trained trainers to support the professional development of teachers in non-BINOM schools.

In spite of the challenges that inevitably accompany operations of this scope and complexity, our experience in Kazakhstan was both very rewarding and extremely pleasant, and we very much look forward to future opportunities to be once again side by side with those who want to improve their competences and the quality of the education provided to children in their country.

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