Teach for Qazaqstan
On June 21, during a live broadcast, I talked about the fiscal 2024 yearend results, our investments in the digital ecosystem we have created, and our overall projects and plans. This was an open broadcast that is available for viewing by anyone. As you might imagine, during the broadcast, the focus of my attention and the attention of the media revolved around our financial results, which is very normal in this kind of situation.
As I thought more about this broadcast it occurred to me that I did not mention the great work being done with “Teach for Qazaqstan” (TFQ) who is a network partner of the “Teach for All” global network. The TFQ project was created by the McKinsey Kazakhstan partner, Dulatbek Ikbayev, and is financially supported by Freedom Holding Corp. TFQ has a big mission which is to reduce educational disparity between urban and rural areas, training a new generation of teachers, and providing modern educational opportunities for schoolchildren. This is another amazing tool that will allow our young nation to be competitive tomorrow, and children from rural schools and single-industry towns to feel equal to those in cities today.
In Kazakhstan we really are experiencing a demographic boom, but unfortunately, the educational infrastructure and personnel training systems needed to keep pace with this growth isn’t there, and this is worsened by the fact that there are simply not enough teachers. What I’m speaking about here is are forward thinking teachers who are very familiar with AI tech, such as Chat GPT, have a good background and an open mind, and are capable of giving something more to children than just what they can read in a textbook.
TFQ partially solves this problem. Now the team led by Gulnara Salmen and Gulnur Zhasekenova is making a large-scale selection of every kind of instructor who wants to connect their activities with teaching at a school. They conduct educational retraining under the auspices of SDU University and employ these newly trained instructors in schools where there is shortage of personnel and a demand for this kind of teacher.
They select from a field of practicing IT specialists, marketers, journalists, and researchers who come to a regular regional school and work with children for two years. Suitable candidates are not only given basic teaching skills, but they are also supported throughout the entire period of work and integrated with school management and local communities.
While the TFQ project has just been launched and is continuing to be tested, the first 25 teachers are working in the Karaganda region and at the end of June, they will be joined by another 15 colleagues. This is an amazing project that needs to be scaled up rapidly and I really want my business colleagues to support these guys.