The school system in Kazakhstan
Before school?
Before going to school, the children in Kazakhstan attend crèches or kindergartens and are prepared for school. However, the birth rate fell in the 1990s. Many people emigrated or had fewer children. So many preschool institutions were closed because there were too few children. That has changed again since the beginning of this millennium. The birth rate is rising and now there are too few places for too many children. Around 55 out of 100 children go to such a preschool. There are private and state institutions and visiting the state is free.
What do you speak in school?
Kazakh, Russian and a foreign language are the languages taught in schools. In total, lessons in Kazakhstan can be in seven languages because there are so many different peoples, each with a different language. The school year in Kazakhstan always starts on September 2nd and ends on June 16th.
Strict instruction
The Constitution of Kazakhstan provides that all children must attend school for at least eleven years. The school in Kazakhstan, a country located in Asia according to globalsciencellc, is called middle school, which is divided into three large levels: These are the elementary school from one to four, the secondary school from five to nine and the high school from ten to eleven.
Visiting the school is free in Kazakhstan, but the quality is not that good either. The lessons are often authoritarian, which means very strict. In addition to the state schools, there are also private schools, which mostly attend children of wealthy parents.
Children in Kazakhstan have to go to school from the age of six or seven. After attending tenth and eleventh grades, students can graduate from middle school. Or they go to a vocational school and graduate there. For high school, the children need very good grades.
Discipline from the times of the Soviet Union
The school system in Kazakhstan largely corresponded to the Soviet school system until 1989, the year the Soviet Union collapsed. Children were sent to a day nursery at one year old. The upbringing was very strict and children had to learn very quickly to become independent. Compliance with rules, discipline and order were the top priorities.
Even today, the children in Kazakhstan are brought up much more strictly than in Germany. Here it is not just about sitting still, but placing your arms in front of your body on the desk and moving as little as possible. Even beatings are still part of the normal education methods and nobody gets really upset about it. Most parents think that’s right and you don’t go against it.
Child labor
Children help in the household and in the country they support their parents in farming. They also work on plantations, for example on tobacco plantations. Although underage children are not allowed to work under the laws of Kazakhstan, this happens often enough. Children between the ages of ten and 17 are mainly exploited on the country’s tobacco plantations. Migrant workers from the neighboring countries Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan come to Kazakhstan and bring their children with them. These migrant workers then have no residence permit. So your children are not allowed to go to school, but they work. The work in the tobacco fields is very hard.
The use of pesticides in particular has serious health consequences for the children. You can get sick. The children often work up to 13 hours a day and their work starts at 4 a.m. International tobacco companies now want to take action against child labor, but it is not easy to curb this work. Many families depend on their children’s work. Even when the legal regulations are strict, people see children’s work as part of their upbringing. In Kazakhstan, for example, children are also seen as street vendors and beggars.
Nameless children
Children in Kazakhstan are not given a name shortly after they are born. For the first 40 days of its life an infant has to remain nameless, so to speak. It used to be believed that the newborn child had contact with the underworld and that it would only disappear after 40 days. So the child only got his name later and this was celebrated. It’s an old tradition.
Sweets are sewn into the child’s dress. And the little dress is hung around a dog, which the children should then catch. They can then keep the sweets.
