“Where we are and where to go” or what are the outcomes of the implementation of the gifted education in Kazakhstan?

                               

                                  image source: http://internationaleducationmalaysia.com/

The previous post was about my critiques on the matter of gifted education implementation. After analyzing the things have done so far in this field, I thought about dedicating this post to positive outcomes.      

    Building human capital which will guarantee the competitiveness of the country in the future is probably an ultimate goal of every single country. The Government of Kazakhstan strongly believes that today`s students of schools for gifted students will be the future leaders and consequently, it will bring great returns for the whole society. It has been a long way since 1996 when the Decree about support and development of schools for gifted children was established. Many salient actions have been taken towards the advancement of the reform by now and we may be proud of success which is already seen.

     Nowadays, Kazakhstan is a new brand at the world arena in terms of education context due to the fact that many our whiz kids with extraordinary research projects make an astonishing impression on scientists abroad. For instance, according to the head of the Daryn (as cited in Amirova, 2013), a 10^th grade student of rural region Kusainova Asiya generated a wind turbine which has no analogue in the world and presented her masterpiece technology in the USA where she was awarded the first prize. Moreover, Asiya was given a scholarship to study there. Undoubtedly, there are many Asiyas in our country who make Kazakhstan popular and more powerful in authority. Kazakhstan thanks to its bright students’ achievements was honoured to hold the International Physics Olympiad 2014 (IPhO) where there were 385 participants from 85 countries and Kazakhstani team was among the top 10 having won 3 gold and 3 silver medals (IPHO-2014: Kazakhstan among the top ten in the world!,2014). In addition, there is no doubt that these young scientists interested in research, innovations and new technologies will impact on the country`s economy. Hence, all the countries around the world keep an eye on the dynamically developing country in Central Asia since the work has done so far on gifted education within the research projects continue giving successful results (Amirova, 2013).

     Whatever changes happening in global society require a big responsibility from teachers. To be able to teach the gifted and talented generation of our country there are a lot of professional development programs, seminars, conferences, short term courses constantly organized by Daryn RRPC. For example, NIS enable teachers to take the “Development of Children’s Giftedness” program which gives them an opportunity to expand their qualifications as a professional (Madeyeva, 2013).

     The most significant impact is seen on the gifted students themselves. Since the program is expanding its margins with different academic competitions, students have a great opportunity to take part in scientific Olympiads like “Akbota”, “Zolotoe runo”, “Kangaroo”, “Zerde”, etc. According to the director of the “Daryn” RRPC Kirabayeva (as cited in Amirova, 2013), there were 161 gold, 285 silver and 397 bronze medal international competition winners in 2012, and approximately 70% of them study at Nazarbayev University. One more remarkable fact to point out is that those republican or international Olympiad winners are free of taking UNT; moreover, they have a priority while applying to State grants or even are given a special scholarship to study at one of the prestigious universities in Kazakhstan.

          In summary, it is worthy to reiterate that the implementation of gifted education is giving good results. Certainly, the country knows where it stays today because the ultimate goal is set firmly. 

                                                                    References

Amirova, B. (2013). Blagorodnaya missiya Daryn [The noble mission Daryn ]. Class time 13(61).

IPHO-2014: Kazakhstan among the top ten in the world! IPHO-2014. Retrieved November 22, 2014 from < http://ipho2014.kz/blogs/view/1/42>

Madeyeva, I.A. (2013). Development of children’s giftedness. Pedagogical Dialogue, 3(5), 34-40.