School curriculum in Kazakhstan: new perspectives.

Abstract

The paper analyses recent changes in the secondary education’s curriculum of Kazakhstan. Over the last two decades, the curriculum has undergone development and improvement geared towards the present-day demands. The issue of designing a subject-oriented curriculum of secondary education has included three aspects: defining the content (component) of education, ascertaining the number of school subjects and the selection of the subject-matter within each school subject. All the discussed three aspects are still of paramount importance today and some points of supplementation and change in the curriculum should be taken into account. For instance, Kazakhstan has come up with a draft of the State Mandatory Standard of Secondary Education (SES) that presents a new structure of the schooling system and a new model of the 12-year secondary education curriculum. At this point, the draft of the State Mandatory Standard of Primary Education is discussed. The Standard introduces fundamentally new approaches towards structuring the curriculum of a five-year primary school. Based on the survey method, the paper presents teachers’ attitudes towards the new academic programmes. The survey findings confirm the rationale for bringing about changes in the process of designing the secondary education curriculum.