3rd Global Forum on the Future of Education and Skills 2030
In 2021, Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools AEO (hereinafter – NIS) continued its work as the national coordinator from Kazakhstan in the OECD the Future of Education and Skills 2030 project. On 10-12 May 2021, NIS took part in the third virtual stakeholder meeting of the OECD Global Forum (hereinafter – the Forum). The first Global Forum meeting took place in May 2020, and the second meeting – in October 2020.
The main topic of the forum is “Preparing for Post-Covid Education: Closing Equity Gaps through Personalised & Digital Curriculum”. Anel Basharova, Valeriya Kim, Zhomart Zheksenbay, Grade 11 students of the Intellectual School in Taldykorgan, and Jafar Kabidenov, Grade 11 student of NIS PhM in Almaty attended the Forum. The Forum gathered more than 300 participants worldwide.
For three days, participants worked in groups with international experts using ZOOM. Particular attention was paid to the opinions and experiences of students from around the world. Our students were assigned to different focus groups and had the opportunity to work with participants from Indonesia, Japan, Estonia, Portugal, India, etc.
The groups discussed the assessment system and teaching methods for vulnerable groups of students, the importance of a comfortable learning environment, the relationships between teachers and students, and the competencies that teachers should have in our time. Anel Basharova emphasised the importance of supporting vulnerable students by parents and society, so that they could feel their importance and significance in life. Valeriya Kim focused on the importance of establishing trusting relationships between students and teachers that help to involve students in the learning process. Zhomart Zheksenbay shared the experience of school self-government in NIS, and his vision of ideal school conditions for students and teachers.
Webinars for East Kazakhstan Secondary School Teachers
On April, 30, subject coordinators of Centre for Educational Programmes delivered a series of webinars for primary school teachers and teachers of English representing S. Lastayev and R. Marsekov and Ulken Naryn mainstream schools as part of the Rural Schools Project.
These webinars aim to provide methodological support for teachers in the use of renewed educational programmes.
During the webinars, teachers focused on the ways how to develop students’ research, communication, project management and problem solving skills and to effectively apply interactive methods in developing language competence.
OECD Report “The state of school education: the pandemic year”
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, more than 1.5 billion students around the world were unable to attend schools. A year later, the situation is still unstable. Schools open and then close: all this, to one degree or another, creates difficulties for students.
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) – in collaboration with UNESCO, UNICEF and the World Bank – monitors the situation in different countries and collects data on how each system responds to the crisis: from school closures and distance learning to vaccinating teachers and gradual return to school.
In April 2021, OECD released its report “The state of school education: the pandemic year”. This report presents the preliminary results of a survey that provides an overview of the situation in the world one year after COVID.
The survey results show that some countries have managed not to close schools completely. At the same time, distancing and hygiene were the most widely used measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, but they imposed significant restrictions on school capacity and made changes in education. However, it causes concern that the countries with the lowest PISA education scores tended to close their schools completely for longer periods in 2020. For more information about the survey results, please click on the following link: https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/201dde84-en.pdf?expires=1619762381&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=FBDB251A39CB40AE77CA864DC65545E2
On 25-26 March, during the holiday period, T.U. Aubakirov and A.I. Balguzhinova, subject specialists of Centre for Educational Programmes, and S.B.Kalkulov, the leader of Mathematics Teachers’ Methodological Association of Almaty NIS PhM, delivered a workshop “Random Variables and Problems in Mathematical Statistics” for 10-12 grades teachers.
The workshop was organised as part of the professional development to prepare teachers for the teaching of a new unit of grade 12 curriculum – “Basic Problems of Mathematical Statistics”.
The workshop was focused on improving their subject knowledge on the topics that had been introduced in the curriculum for the first time; and discussing the methodological aspects of teaching these topics and preparing students for external summative assessment. The participants solved the construction problems, and used point and interval estimation to find the distribution of random variables, and statistical hypothesis testing problems.
The workshop was attended by a total of 260 NIS teachers.
Webinars for secondary school teachers in the East-Kazakhstan region
On 31 March 2021, the subject coordinators of Centre for Educational Programmes delivered webinars for Lastayev, Marsekov and Ulken Naryn school teachers within the Rural School project.
The webinars were attended by 69 teachers.
The aim is to provide methodological support for teachers in using the renewed subject programmes.
The webinars addressed the features of the renewed subject programmes on Science and Mathematics, linguistic and humanities.
Teachers were focused on developing students’ research, communication and problem-solving skills; and on effecting applying the interactive methods that influence the development of language competence.
The webinars have proved to be useful and timely within the new learning environment based on the audience feedback.
The next series of webinars for teachers in the East-Kazakhstan region are scheduled for April
