Kazakhstan Faces Shortage of 245,000 School Places

Kazakhstan’s schools are short of 245,000 places. Overcrowded schools may refuse to enroll children even if their families live nearby, Orda.kz reports.

First Deputy Education Minister Shynar Akparova said parents may choose which school their child attends, but schools cannot exceed their designated capacity or violate sanitary requirements.

If the preferred school is full, the child must instead be offered a place at another nearby school,she said.

Applications for first grade will remain open until August 31. Schools expect approximately 380,000 first-graders this year.

The ministry said some enrollment refusals issued after the electronic application platform launched in May were caused by technical problems or incorrectly submitted documents. Akparova said those issues had since been resolved.

Ministry representative Zhaiyk Sharabasov said Kazakhstan lacked approximately one million school places in 2020. Over the following five years, 1,120 schools were built, including 217 under the Keleshek Mektepteri project, reducing the shortage to 245,000.

The government also funds places at private schools. In 2026, 749 private schools received approximately 118 billion tenge under the state education order.

Kazakhstan still has 48 schools operating in three shifts. More than half are in the Almaty region, where student numbers continue to increase as the Almaty metropolitan area expands.

Original author: Ilya Astakhov

Read also:

• Kazakhstan Built Far Fewer Schools Than Planned Under National Project
• Every 15th Public School In Kazakhstan Has No Principal
• Almaty: Residents Disagree Over Language of Instruction at New School No. 224