Kazakhstan education and science to focus on innovations and ecology

Nazarbayev believes that Kazakhstan’s welfare and innovations start with the country’s ecology, Tengrinews.kz reports citing Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev as saying at the meeting with Kazakhstan Minister of Education and Science Bakhytzhan Zhumagulov. Nursultan Nazarbayev noted that green economy means, first of all, innovations and the future development will be based on them. “If everything is good with the ecology, new technologies will keep developing as well,” President said. He said that develop of innovative technologies in especially important because Kazakhstan would be hosting the EXPO-2017 Energy of the Future Global Exhibition in Astana. The meeting also covered the course of implementation of the instructions made in line with the State Education Development Program. They also discussed the state and prospects of development of the scientific-and-education sector. “The number of kindergartens has increased 7-fold over the past 10 years and the coverage of children with pre-school education reached 70 percent. The number of schools in emergency condition went 20 percent down. 906 new schools have been built over the period and another 400 schools are going to be constructed. We are creating the conditions to transfer (from 11-year) to 12-year education,”the President’s press-service cited Bakytzhan Zhumagulov as saying. The Minister also noted that financing of education doubled over the past 2 years and the number of young people involved in scientific projects reached 18 thousand. “Around 3,000 young scientists came to work in research and development in the last 2.5 years. There are graduates of Kazakhstan and foreign universities among them. Besides, Kazakhstan educational facilities are actively adopting practices of Nazarbayev University and Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools, especially in terms of implementation of online-education,” the message states. According to the press-service, optimization of the number of universities is being done in line with the plan: their number was cut from 149 to 139. “Decreasing the number of universities should not be a mechanical process. We have to consider all the criteria, including the teaching quality and scientific-research activities. Some private universities do not have a required base, highly-qualified professors or other important conditions to offer good-quality education,” Nursultan Nazarbayev stressed at the meeting. The President noted that equipment of schools and other educational facilities should be improved. All educational projects were being fully financed.