This chapter examines the policy learning that has taken place during the process of piloting the per-capita funding formula and the school-board governance models in Kazakhstan. It draws on evidence from policy documents, secondary data sources and the primary data from collaborative research by the Nazarbayev University Graduate School of Education (NUGSE) and the University of Cambridge (2019–2020) and the NUGSE research project for 2021–2023 focused on country-wide implementation of per-capita school funding. The chapter describes the process of piloting this funding and documents how school principals perceive this new approach and the new mandated policy of appointing their boards of trustees. This research concludes that the piloting of the per-capita funding model and scaling up this reform affirm the importance of time and an ongoing policy evaluation for enabling policy learning and achieving improved policy outcomes. Hence, every phase of piloting this funding resulted in some new understanding of this model among school principals. In addition, they gained knowledge about the boards of trustees’ role in school improvement.

Chapter 12 is a brief chapter that sets out the research aims, design and processes of several collaborative research projects conducted by a large team of researchers from the University of Cambridge and Nazarbayev University. It covers the three-year period from 2018 to 2020 to describe the rationales and methods used for data collection alongside the philosophies of reporting applied in forming three regional case studies. It ends by signalling how the case studies and earlier research findings from 2018 combine to allow for contrasts between regions and layers in the educational system that inform on the variations and commonalities found pursuant to systemic educational reform.

Schools had started piloting the Renewed Content of Education with Grade 1 in September 2015, then moved on to Grade 2 in 2016 and to Grade 3 in September 2017. The pilot schools acted as test sites one year ahead of the full roll-out to all mainstream schools in Kazakhstan. The research evidence collected over the two-year period comprises a mixed sample of primary grade (Grades 1–4) teachers, comparing those starting their second or third year of teaching the new content with those who were yet to have direct experience of it. Interviews and/or focus groups with teachers, school principals and vice-principals were conducted in each of six schools. In addition, primary grade teachers were invited to respond to surveys. The areas of inquiry included overall opinions as well as more targeted attitudes towards the revised content of the curriculum, changes to teaching and learning, new approaches to assessment and the support afforded to implement the new curriculum. The chapter will show that piloting had been a very worthwhile step in the implementation of a new curriculum, with a growing confidence and appreciation of what this curriculum aimed to achieve.

The aim of Chapter 16, written by researchers from the University of Cambridge and Nazarbayev University, is to ask: how coherent was implementation of the Renewed Content of Education? It bridges the gap between piloting and national implementation to report and analyse the experiences found in both pilot and non-pilot schools as reform took place at two longitudinal points: two and three years after implementation. Additionally, it reports on the third-year implementation experiences found in the district and regional layers of administration that sit above schools. In essence, it considers coherence across the entire school system as framed by the experiences of, and communications and interactions between, schools, districts and regional stakeholders.

This chapter is a case study that describes the reality of innovation and reform of the content of school education in a single region in the south of Kazakhstan. The region has a mix of urban and rural schools, although the majority are rural in nature since agricultural employment dominates the local economy with some very remote locations and many families on low incomes. Despite the difficulties of geography, ethnic diversity and poverty, the research showed that the regional authority tended to adopt a ‘can-do’ attitude and looked for solutions to implement the Renewed Content of Education successfully rather than respond passively. There were pockets of resistance evident which prevented full implementation of the Renewed Content of Education. Such instances demonstrated the magnitude of transformation expected and the critical role of communication between regional authorities, district authorities, schools and parents.