260,000 children go to school first time this year

The first school bell rang for 260 thousand first graders on the Day of Knowledge -- September 1 -- in Kazakhstan, Tengrinews.kz reports. According to the Ministry of Education and Science, Kazakhstan schools welcomed more than 2.5 million students and 292 thousand teachers in the new academic year. 9 645 young school teachers were recruited in 2013, including 3 691 teachers of English language. This year children start to study English from the first grade. This is done to pursue the policy of making Kazakhstan and trilingual country where everyone is fluent in 3 languages: Kazakh, Russian and English. 77 new schools were opened by September 1 in Kazakhstan and 159 more schools are expected to be commissioned by the end of this year. Another school novelty is that parents in Kazakhstan can now choose schools for their kids to go to via the internet. Using the e-government portal www.egov.kz they can file all the documents and get their kids enrolled without having to personally go see the director.