Ministry of Education and Science to develop uniform requirements for online education platforms

During a briefing at the press center of the government, Minister of Education and Science Askhat Aimagambetov spoke about the measures taken in the educational sphere as part of the implementation of the Address of the Head of State "Kazakhstan in a New Reality: Time for Action" dated Sep 1, 2020.

On behalf of the President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, the ministry will work on the formation of the concept of lifelong education, on the platform of distance learning and the achievement of 100% coverage of children under 6 years of age with preschool education and training. At the same time, unlike the current system, the state order will no longer be distributed by departments or departments of education. Instead, parents of children assigned to kindergarten will choose their own preschool organization. A voucher mechanism will be introduced, which will promote competition and improve the quality of services.

At the same time, for the full implementation of the educational process, the Ministry of Education and Science will develop uniform requirements for online education platforms. Also, together with the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Kazakhstan, a procedure for transition to the traditional format of training will be developed in compliance with all sanitary requirements.

To increase the salaries of teachers from Jan. 1, 2021, by 25%, the Ministry of Education and Science prepared appropriate calculations and submitted them to the Ministry of Finance within the framework of financing until 2023.

The Minister of Education and Science emphasized that the issues of protecting the rights of children are in the President's area of ​​special attention. A very important step will be our country's accession to the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on a communications procedure.

“Protecting children from cyberbullying, the widespread opening of children's sports clubs and clubs, coupled with the development of additional education organizations, will become unconditional priorities for the activities of akimats and educational organizations. Work to increase the coverage of schoolchildren in mass sports will be organized in a new way and on a systematic basis. Gyms will be built in schools, national and mass sports leagues will develop,” Aimagambetov said.

Work on environmental education has begun in schools and universities. To improve students' level of environmental culture, environmental knowledge and education, a comprehensive model of continuous education will be introduced. In addition, a separate program document on the scientific and technological development of the country will be prepared jointly with the scientific and business community. Competitive procedures are now underway for 500 scientists to undergo scientific internships in leading research centers. In addition, an additional 1,000 grants will be allocated for young scientists "Zhas Galym". Work will be carried out to effectively implement the rate of deduction by subsoil users of 1% of income for the development of science and technology.

Answering the journalists' question regarding the poor quality of the educational material, Aimagambetov said that today a new concept for the preparation of textbooks has been developed, which includes several stages. These are intra-publishing, external, public expertise and approbation.

“There were certain shortcomings in the current system, on behalf of the Head of State, we completely revised the rules for preparing the publication of textbooks. The rules are currently being changed, this is a completely new format. Now the books of the new generation will be published according to the new requirements, there can be no more mistakes,” the minister said.

According to him, approbation should be carried out for at least one year before the mass printing of textbooks.

“We have put in a new form that when a publishing defect is found, the reprint is carried out at the expense of the publishers. We are currently preparing authors, because this is a whole science, a lot depends on the compilation and preparation of educational material,” Aimagambetov noted.

The minister also spoke about the preparation of a Kazakh vaccine against coronavirus infection.

“At the end of March this year, we took the material, already on May 15, 2020, our scientists prepared a candidate vaccine, sent it to WHO, and included it in the list. At the end of August 2020, the WHO admitted our vaccine to clinical trials, included it in the list of candidate vaccines, candidate vaccines are already ready on two platforms, preclinical trials have been successful, the verification has shown full reproducibility of all data. By antibodies, we see that there is also in the acute phase by ELISA, we carried out the analysis for IgM and IgG, which is not inferior to foreign counterparts in antibodies. But besides the antibody response, we see the development of humoral and anticellular immunity, which is also very important,” Aimagambetov said.

According to him, Kazakhstani scientists are already starting the first phase of clinical trials of the domestic vaccine. Volunteers are being recruited.

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