British Council Kazakhstan to partner on Bolashak language training

The British Council will partner with Kazakh Bolashak scholarship in the English language training of future students, Tengrinews reports citing the official website of President Nursultan Nazarbayev.

Bolashak program offers eduction scholarships, all living and tuition expenses included, to outstanding Kazakhstan students with high academic performance to study overseas. Upon the graduation students are obliged to return to Kazakhstan and work for in the country for at least 5 years.

In Spring the Kazakh government announced that Bolashak scholarship raised its bar for foreign languages. “Starting from 2014 the threshold level for the Masters programs and internship applicants has been raised from 3.0 to 4.0 out of 9.0 IETLS. For PhD programs the language proficiency level of IETLS has been raised to 5.0,” Karim Massimov, now Prime Minister and then Acting Secretary of State said.

Participation of the British Council will help the applicants comply with the new requirements. 

Awarding and revoking of the international scholarship was discussed during this week's meeting of the Kazakh State Committee for Personnel Training Abroad chaired by State Secretary Adilbek Dzhaksybekov. This is the same Committee that considers applications for the education scholarship. 

The new project of language training was also examined at the meeting of the Committee. The new language training suggests a two-stage preparation that ranges from 3 to 6 month. British Council will work on developing a methodology of the new course.

The committee approved 338 Bolashak scholarships at the meeting. That is not it for this year. A total of around 1000 scholarships are expected to be issued in 2014.  

Writing by Gyuzel Kamalova, editing by Tatyana Kuzmina