Education in need of reform says UNDP report

"This year's emphasis is on education," Shynar Imangaliyeva, a UNDP senior programme assistant told IRIN, in the Kazakh commercial capital Almaty, noting the main goal was to identify the influence education had on human development. While Kazakhstan enjoyed almost 100 percent enrollment, following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the country faced the daunting task of re-establishing its own education system. "Educators used to contribute to the policies of the Soviet education system, but doing so for its own national system was something new," Imangaliyeva explained, adding even the publishing of text books had been carried out in Moscow. "Something like this takes time and money, as well as a solid legal basis," she maintained. But resources have not been there - a fact pointed out by Tuesday's Human Development Report entitled Education for All: The Key Goal for the New Millennium. According to the Kazakh Agency for Statistics, public funding for education dropped from 6.5 percent in 1991 to 3.3 percent in 2000. As a proportion of the state budget, government spending on education fell by more than 50 percent between 1990 and 1995, reaching a low of 14.7 percent in 2001. Public expenditure on education as a percentage of GDP remained low, the UNDP officer agreed. Education content and the management of the educational system were the primary challenges for Central Asia's largest state, a UNDP statement, announcing the report, read. In Kazakh schools, teaching was largely facts-based, aimed at the delivery of information on one subject or another, while national standards, also based on the subject-approach, were outdated, it said. Indeed, according the report's authors, the existing system failed to motivate students to learn, form interests or choose future professions. "It is necessary to revise the content of secondary education so that coming out of an educational institution, a student not only possesses a set of skills and knowledge, but is also able to critically approach and analyse information, having a good understanding of social, communicational, political and other spheres." As Kazakhstan moves into the post-development phase, it was important to regard education not solely as a factor of economic growth, but as a human development factor, the report said, highlighting that education sector reform should work at bringing the system of education in compliance with current demands of a rapidly growing society. One of the more urgent problems that needed to be addressed was ensuring equal access to quality education. Universal primary and secondary education, regardless of whether the children lived in rural areas or urban areas, in donor regions or subsidised regions, was a key factor in providing equal starting conditions for receiving higher education. According to international research, for a post-industrial society, at least 30 percent of the adult population had to have higher education - something unachievable in Kazakhstan, in part to the unnecessary spread of educational institutions throughout the country. Of the 180 higher education institutions in the former Soviet republic, 69 were located in Almaty city in Southern Kazakhstan, while 15 were located in the central Karaganda region. "We face the same problems as our neighbours with regard to quality and access," Imangaliyeva said. "There is a difference in the quality of education between urban and rural areas." The report concluded that the national policy on education did not account for the interests of students, their parents and employers, claiming civil society had been virtually excluded from managing and controlling the quality of education. Creating an effective educational system was only possible through a joint effort of the state, business and civil society. Such cooperation should ensure transparency and accountability of the system, prevent corruption and increase efficiency, the UNDP believed.