Astana's Education Department is alarmed with a shortage of teachers in the city's schools and with a prospect that the situation is likely to get worse in the near future, Tengrinews reports.
Astana's Education Department is alarmed with a shortage of teachers in the city's schools and with a prospect that the situation is likely to get worse in the near future, Tengrinews reports.
The Department had a meeting with Education Minister Sarinzhipov and the Akim (Mayor) of Astana Imangali Tasmagambetov to discuss the problem earlier this month.
“In terms of the secondary level education (ages 7-15), today Astana schools have a shortage of 200 primary school teachers (for students aged 7-10) and more than 50 math teachers (for students aged 11-15). 700 teachers are nearing the retirement age and will leave the schools before 2016. This will bring the shortage of teachers to 10%. It is an alarming sign, so we have to come up with a decision today. The present shortage puts school administrations in a difficult position, due to the possibility disruption of the educational process. This, in turn, undermines the efficiency of school administrations,” the head of the Education Department Elmira Sukhanberdieva said at the meeting.
Sukhanberdieva proposed to launch a campaign aimed a recruiting more young teachers to solve the problem. “This is not a fast process. And we need to focus on changing the mentality of the school principles first. They should focus on training and improving the efficiency of the teachers that they already have, instead of looking for teachers elsewhere. This is how they can succeed,” the head of the Education Department said.
In addition to school education, Sukhanberdieva also talked about a shortage of teachers in the pre-school education. “As of today, Astana has only one Humanities College that prepares over 50 professionals in pre-school education every year,” Sukhanberdieva explained.
Reporting by Altynai Zhumzhumina, writing by Gyuzel Kamalova, editing by Tatyana Kuzmina