KZBlog

Nice post on the Kazakhstani School System I came across the other day.

Key points that would be interesting to foreigners (or even things I hadn’t quite figured out!):

• Most schools have two sessions of classes- Half the student study in the morning and half the students study in the afternoon. This is because there aren’t enough classrooms or schools for students to study at the same time. Thus the school day is shorter than in the US, but teachers, who teach both morning and afternoon sessions, work 10 hour days
• Students are divided by grade level but also by section. These sections are determined by a test they take in year 1. The top students go into section A, the next group goes into B and the kids with the lowest results go into G or E group. So their intelligence is determined in 1st grade and they will be stuck labeled their whole school careers on the basis of this one test!
• There is really no punishment in Kazakhstani schools. No detention, because the building is in use all day for classes. All you can do is yell at the students [which they get immune to pretty quickly-KZBlog]. So students are crazy in the hallways, talk and fight in class, and generally show low discipline [Telling them that African or Uzbek or Indian students are better disciplined or that you can see from their behavior that Borat was right about Kazakhstan being an uncivilized country, generally shames them enough for them to be good for a week or so–KZBlog
• Students are typically graded every day or every other day. These grades are often subjective based on some oral answer or behavior in class, so the teacher never has to (or often is able to) justify his or her grading policy.

So that’s some food for thought. Dear Kazakhstani, do you have anything to add, or any corrections to make?