How to Close the Gap Between Urban and Rural Schools: Takeaways from Tamyr Education Forum in Almaty

The forum was organized by EA Charity Fund, the corporate foundation of EA Group Holding, with the support of Teach for Qazaqstan and Narxoz Business School. The event was the final stage of a grant competition for education projects, in which four initiatives will receive financial support.

Who took part in the forum

Participants came from the Karaganda and Abai regions, as well as from Almaty and Astana. Many of them teach in remote schools, and many grew up outside big cities themselves. When Gulnara Salmen, co-founder of Teach for Qazaqstan, asked everyone who had attended a rural school to stand up, two-thirds of the room rose.

“How children learn outside big cities will largely shape the future of the country, so conditions need to be leveled out in the coming years. Teachers from villages should not feel cut off,” says Aidar Buribayev, Director of EA Charity Fund.

How the forum worked

The forum was interactive. For most of the day, participants worked in groups led by moderators, with no usual split between speakers and audience. Together with the moderators, they discussed how to build a supportive school environment, how to set standards that take different educational conditions into account, and how business, NGOs and schools can work together.

What solutions participants proposed

By the end of the day, the ideas were brought together in one map divided into four areas: the child, school and environment, partners, and the system. It includes, for example, teacher qualifications, identifying learning gaps, and improving how schools organize their teaching methods.

“For me, the most basic thing is for the school, NGOs and business to sit down together, get to know each other and see the full picture: goals, tasks and timelines. Often a project is great, but the deputy principal for student affairs doesn’t know it has started, the school doesn’t know which business is sponsoring it, and the business expects to reach a number of children that the NGO hasn’t delivered,” said Kuralay Zharkymbayeva, an expert in social-emotional learning and co-founder of the Bridges and Feelings platform.

One example of such a partnership is a rural school in the Aksuat district of the Abai region. Its principal found descendants of a batyr (a revered Kazakh warrior), a native of the village, in Astana and offered to name the school after their ancestor in exchange for support. The family funded the construction of sports facilities, including a tennis court. According to Kuralay, this case shows how important it is to make use of local context.

At the same time, it is unrealistic to expect every school leader to take such initiative without the right conditions. People need training and resources so that cooperation with business and philanthropists becomes a regular practice rather than a one-off.

Participants’ perspectives

Among the participants was Lyudmila Gurova, who leads the oldest school in the city of Abai, Karaganda region. She has worked at the school for 34 years, rising from primary school teacher to principal. For a leader with three years in the role, meetings like this are a chance to turn to colleagues when she lacks the knowledge to solve a problem.

“I raised the issue of young teachers not being well enough prepared. As we started going through the situation, I realized that this problem can easily be solved at the school level. Sometimes it is enough to lend a hand and give some direction, and the person will start to grow,” Lyudmila said.

What’s next

The next step is to work through the ideas on the map and decide which of them can be put into practice.

“We face educational inequality in practice every day. The views of business, NGOs and government agencies help us see this problem from another side. We want to put the proposals we developed at the forum to work, first of all in training teachers and school management teams,” said Akerke Sapuanova, Development Director at Teach for Qazaqstan.

About the organizations

Tamyr Platform is an initiative that supports educational and cultural projects. It was created by the investment holding EA Group Holding and the corporate foundation EA Charity Fund in 2025.

EA Charity Fund is the corporate charitable foundation of EA Group Holding, founded in November 2024. The foundation focuses on supporting education and culture in Kazakhstan.

Teach for Qazaqstan (TFQ) is a nonprofit public foundation working to give all children equal access to quality education in Kazakhstan.

Narxoz Business School (NBS) is one of the leading business schools in Kazakhstan, offering postgraduate and continuing business education programs.