Introducing Trilingual Education Now Makes a Mockery of the Idea

Kazakhstan has roughly 7,500 schools, 335,000 teachers and 2.8 million schoolchildren. Incidentally, in 1990 there were only 248,000 teachers for 3.1 million pupils, and in 2002 there were 279,000 teachers for 3.1 million pupils. But that is secondary. How many of the 335,000 teachers know English and Kazakh? Of the 2.8 million schoolchildren, 1.3 million study in rural areas. And of the 2.8 million, 1.8 million study in Kazakh (half of them in rural areas).

Kazakhstan currently spends around KZT 1.4 trillion a year on education.

Suppose that 30 percent of the 335,000 teachers need to be given a working knowledge of English. That means training 100,000 teachers from scratch, and to a level where they can do more than say that the capital of Great Britain is London: they must be able to use all the specialized terminology. For the quality of instruction not to fall, such teachers need to be able to think in English. To get there, a teacher must either live in an English-speaking environment for about three years, or study in English, or complete a full foreign-language course.

An ordinary English course at a regular language school costs around KZT 30,000 a month. To go through all the levels, one needs at least three years of uninterrupted study. For one teacher, the cost of such training comes to around KZT 1,080,000. Multiply that by 100,000 teachers and we get KZT 108 billion. That is the cost of training alone, and there is no guarantee it will produce results.

Next, all textbooks must either be translated into English or purchased from abroad. If we buy foreign ones, all the teachers will have to be retrained in foreign languages.

Then new textbooks will have to be bought for all pupils. In cities, some part of the population can afford them themselves, but for most of the rural population they will have to be purchased. That is some 5–6 million textbooks. Even if each textbook costs KZT 500, that is another KZT 3 billion or so.

There is also the matter of time taken away from teachers' own affairs, since such training would have to take place in their free time. And not everyone can manage it: some have children of their own, some live far away, some have parents to care for. And so on.

The average teacher's salary is around KZT 87,000. That means such a teacher takes home about KZT 70,000. Do you think a teacher with a university degree and a knowledge of English will work for KZT 70,000? Naturally, to provide an incentive, teachers' pay will have to be raised. By how much? I think at least twofold. And that means billions more tenge.

And most important of all: what do we actually want? For a schoolchild to know physics and mathematics well, or to know mathematical terms in English?

Believe me, most pupils will know nothing in English beyond the terms.

That is why this whole idea of trilingual education looks like a mockery. It will simply finish off the last remnants of education in this country.

So what would be better?

1. In my view, Kazakhstan has no need for everyone to know English. Take a pupil who becomes a lathe operator or a fitter: he will forget the language a year after leaving school. The same goes for 80–90 percent of pupils. If we want to teach in a foreign language, we should do it gradually, by creating schools like, for example, the Kazakh-Turkish Lyceums. Children should be admitted to them on a competitive basis, and the best of them, those who actually want it, should be taught the language. Some of these schools should be set up as boarding schools so as to admit rural children as well. Then the number of such schools can be expanded step by step, and in about 20 years coverage will be broad, without any loss in the quality of education.

2. Higher education. To start introducing trilingual education, we must first teach those who will be introducing it. So we should begin not with schools but with universities. First, teacher training should be switched to English and Kazakh. Only after at least three cohorts have graduated with the new skills should we begin the gradual, systematic introduction of trilingual education in schools, and even then on a competitive basis. That would be in about 10 years.

We are like the man in the proverb: tell a priest to pray to God and he will smash his forehead on the floor.

As for our businesspeople, instead of a petition I would suggest that they open and take under their patronage at least 10–20 schools, equip them fully and set aside money to top up the pay of teachers who know English. Schools like that need to be created, rather than simply signing appeals.