Kazakhstan Reworks Education System To Match Jobs And Relieve Crowded Schools

Kazakhstan is shifting its education policy away from simply growing enrollment and toward tighter government control of admissions, expanded vocational pathways and a push to digitize classrooms, officials said. The changes, rolled out through 2025 and 2026, are aimed at easing severe teacher and worker shortages, reducing overcrowding in urban schools and narrowing the gap between what graduates know and what employers need.

The immediate driver is a shortage of classroom space in large cities and southern provinces as people move within the country and urban populations swell. The national "Comfortable School" program, launched to add nearly 370 new schools and room for roughly three-quarters of a million pupils during 2023–24, has fallen behind schedule. State contractor Samruk-Kazyna Construction reports that by late 2025 about 208 buildings had opened, creating just over 217,000 new seats, with most facilities concentrated in the capital, Almaty and the Turkistan region. Project managers blame supplier failures and rising material prices, and the president warned that even a faster build-out would only be a short-term fix; at current trends the deficit of places could grow to about four hundred thousand.

Technology is becoming an increasingly visible part of the response. In May 2026 President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev signed a directive to introduce machine-learning tools into secondary schools as supplements to teachers, intended to tailor lessons, flag learning gaps and cut routine paperwork. Pilot schools must have high-speed internet by Aug. 1, and national rules for classroom use of the systems are due Sept. 1. Education officials say the tools are not meant to replace instructors, but some classroom leaders and parent groups are cautious about data privacy and the readiness of teachers to adopt new methods.

Vocational and technical training are getting a larger slice of state support. For the 2025–26 school year, roughly seven in ten state-funded spots in the technical college system were steered toward engineering and industrial skills—fields such as metallurgy, mechanical trades, energy, construction and computing. The government is widening programs that pair students with employers for hands-on learning; more than 4,000 firms report formal links with colleges. Still, these partnerships are most active in heavy-industry zones, while small and midsize firms in many areas are reluctant to host apprentices or invest in training infrastructure.

Higher education is being reshaped as well. Science and higher-education minister Sayasat Nurbek outlined a plan to reallocate government grants to fields with the tightest labor supply, such as thermal power, industrial engineering, water-management and materials studies. University funding will increasingly reflect school rankings and how well graduates find jobs, a shift that could shrink budgets at weaker regional institutions. Top universities have also been allowed to raise entry requirements for sought-after humanities courses to discourage excess demand for economics and law and nudge some applicants toward technical programs.

Officials are also redesigning the college entrance exam. Working with the U.S.-based Educational Testing Service and the National Testing Center, the ministry is developing an Admissions Insight Test, meant to supplant the current Unified National Test by about 2030. The new exam will place less emphasis on memorization and more on evaluating reasoning, problem-solving and communication. Analysts see the package of reforms as part of a broader move toward tighter state steering of education to meet industrial needs. "The government is aligning classroom outputs with labor-market inputs," said Aida Nurmagambetova, a labor-market researcher in Almaty, adding that success will depend on execution at the local level and stronger incentives for smaller businesses to take part in training.