First world level VTE colleges to be opened in 2014
"It is crucial to develop dual vocational education. We need modern centers of advanced training which will help to reduce the personnel deficit," President Nursultan Nazarbayev wrote in his article "Social Modernization of Kazakhstan: 20 Steps toward a Society of Universal Labor".
The first vocational and technical colleges of the world level will be put into service in Astana and Almaty in 2014 and in Aktobe and Shymkent in 2016. These colleges will become new "growth points" in the vocational and technical education system like the Nazarbayev University in the higher education system and the Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools in the secondary education.
As "Kasipkor" Holding reports, the education process in colleges will be based on the system of multidisciplinary schools. Thus, the colleges will have schools of engineering, architecture and construction, information and communication technologies, design, agro-industrial complex, tourism and hotel business, interdisciplinary schools and centers of innovations and development.
Besides, the construction of four interregional vocational centers for training and retraining is underway. The first of them preparing specialists for the oil and gas sector will be opened in Atyrau this year.
Vocational centers training workers for metallurgy and engineering sectors will be opened in Ust-Kamenogorsk, for energy sector in Ekibastuz in 2013. A center preparing workers for the light and processing industries will be put into service in Shymkent in 2014.
Presently, Kazakhstan develops cooperation with the world leading vocational and technical education institutions. The German Society for International Cooperation and the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT Polytechnic) are among them.
Innovative education programs are developed jointly with foreign partners in order to introduce dual education system. In this regard, Kazakhstani teachers undertake internship in vocational and technical education institutions of Singapore, Germany, Canada. Thus, 140 vocational and technical education employees undertake training in Singapore within the memorandum of understanding signed between the Ministry of Education and Science of Kazakhstan and Nanyang Polytechnic this year.
Close cooperation with the world leading VTE institutions and construction of new colleges of the world level will help to intensify the process of vocational and technical education system modernization in Kazakhstan.