Education in Irad

Education in Irad is organized separately on the two sides of the Qara-Chik Demarcation Line. In the Irad Special Economic Zone (ISEZ), schooling is compulsory, and since the Language and Education Reform Act of 1997 public schools have taught in Iradi and English, with Russian an optional foreign language. Church schools, Russian-language private schools and vocational lyceums operate alongside the public system.^[1] The main institutions of higher education are Talas State University, the oldest and largest, and the Nurzhan Polytechnic Institute, which specializes in petroleum engineering. In the 2018 census, 23 percent of ISEZ residents aged 25 and over had completed higher education.^[2] In the Autonomous Tribal Regions (ATR), schools are run by village councils and parishes, teach only in Iradi and depend heavily on aid agencies.^[3]

History

Before 1925

Formal education before the Soviet period was largely religious. A school for clergy was established beside the Church of St. Janyl in Iyık Janyl in the 1730s, together with the cathedral library, and taught Classical Syriac, liturgy and chant to candidates for the priesthood. In the towns of the Fergana rim and the Talas valley, Muslim children attended mosque schools (maktab) and madrasas. Under Russian rule a small number of Russian-native schools were opened for the local population.^[4]

Soviet period

After the creation of the Iradi Soviet Socialist Republic in 1925, the policy of nativization (korenizatsiia) standardized Iradi in a Latin alphabet in 1928, and literacy campaigns spread it widely. The educator Altynai Bekzhanova opened Kobozev's first Iradi-language secondary schools in the 1930s. From 1937 schools switched to Russian-only teaching, and from 1941 Iradi was written in Cyrillic. Higher education developed after the war: the Kobozev Petroleum Institute was founded in 1951 and became the Kobozev Polytechnic Institute in 1968, and Iradi State University named after V. I. Lenin (since 1993 Talas State University) was founded in 1958 on the basis of the Talas Pedagogical Institute. By the end of the Soviet period adult literacy was near universal, but most urban Iradis had been educated in Russian.^[4][5]

Territorial period (1992–2006)

The territorial administration made Iradi and English the languages of instruction in place of Russian. The change ran ahead of the supply of teachers: in 1994 the territorial Office of Education reported about 1,100 qualified English teachers against an estimated need of more than 6,000. Schools retrained teachers of Russian and German, used imported American textbooks and relied on volunteer teachers recruited through Christian charities. The English of the generation educated in these years, the Urban Iradi Millennials, is often described as formal and textbook-based.^[6]

The Language and Education Reform Act of 1997 made the Latin alphabet compulsory in schools and instruction in Iradi and English compulsory in public schools, and reorganized the public school system on the American model. Specialized schools for English, such as Talas Municipal Gymnasium No. 4, were created from 1993. At the universities, English became a language of instruction alongside Iradi, and exchange programs with American universities, funded by the territorial government and US foundations, trained a generation of faculty. The Nurzhan Polytechnic Institute introduced English-language degree programs in petroleum engineering in 1996 and an American-style credit-hour system in 1997.^[1][5] The historian Amanbek Alimbekov was chancellor of Talas State University until his death in 2004. Church education revived: the seminary at Iyık Janyl reopened in 1994, and the St. Maryam Catholic Academy in Talas opened in 2001.

Since 2007

Under the ISEZ the Governor appoints the rectors of both universities; at the Polytechnic, a statute of 2008 provides that he chooses from candidates nominated by the academic council. Students of Talas State University took a leading part in the 2023 Student Protests in Talas, and according to human rights groups several faculty members were dismissed afterward.^[7] On the tribal side, many schools that had taught in Iradi and English during the territorial period dropped English after the 2007 partition.

School system in the ISEZ

Schooling is compulsory for nine years from the age of six or seven. Since the 1997 reform the public system has had twelve grades, divided into elementary school (grades 1–5), middle school (grades 6–9) and high school (grades 10–12). Public schools are run by the city governments and the district administrations, under a curriculum set by the ISEZ.^[1] Instruction is in Iradi and English, and Russian is taught as an optional foreign language.

Private and specialized schools include:

• church schools, such as the parish schools of the Syro-Iradi Catholic Church in Talas and Nurzhan and the St. Maryam Catholic Academy, run by the Sisters of the Cross of Irad, which has about 520 pupils and teaches the ISEZ curriculum in English and Iradi with optional Classical Syriac and religious education;^[8]
• Russian-language schools in Nurzhan, many of them funded by the foundation of the oil executive Kamran Bekzatov, and schools linked to NurGaz;
• selective public schools, such as Talas Municipal Gymnasium No. 4, which teaches mathematics and foreign languages at an advanced level and has its own riding program;
• vocational schools, such as the Nurzhan Technical Lyceum, which has about 900 students and places apprentices with NurGaz and engineering plants.^[9]

The children of US military personnel attend a school at Talas Air Base.

Higher education

Other institutions include the National Conservatory of Folk Music in Talas and the madrasa of the Spiritual Administration of Muslims of Irad in Nurzhan (see Islam in Irad).^[5][10] The medical faculty trains about 400 medical students, residents and nursing students a year at the Talas Regional Hospital Medical Complex, where much of the teaching is in English.

Because Irad's international status is unresolved, recognition of Iradi degrees abroad depends on agreements between institutions and on employers. Russian and Kazakh oil companies generally accept the Polytechnic's degrees, and neither university appears in the major international rankings.^[11] Many students go abroad, to the United States, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkey.

Autonomous Tribal Regions

In the ATR, schools are run by village councils and parishes, and Iradi is the only language of instruction. Most are small primary schools; the four-classroom Kök-Jar Primary School in the Chatkal Highlands, built in 1966 for the children of workers at a Soviet antimony mine, has about 70 pupils, most of them from herding families. It taught in Iradi and English during the territorial period, but the clan council made Iradi the only language of instruction after 2008.^[3] Teachers' salaries are paid by the councils, and textbooks and supplies come largely from aid agencies.

Parish priests teach reading and the catechism in many villages, and elders pass on genealogy, oral epic and horsemanship in what are often called clan schools, informal classes held in winter villages and, in some clans, in the summer pastures. In the Muslim villages of the Fergana Rim, children attend mosque schools, and a few larger villages have small madrasas.^[3][12] Secondary schooling is scarce, and pupils who want to continue their studies must cross into the ISEZ, where certificates issued by clan councils are not recognized. Older clerks in the tribal regions often still write Iradi in Cyrillic.

Issues

• Language. The ISEZ administration has pressed the Nurzhan Polytechnic Institute to teach in Iradi and English, while much of its senior staff still teaches in Russian, a practice defended by Russo members of the Nurzhan city council. Bekzatov and other Russo figures call for Russian to be restored as an official language.^[11]
• Church and state. The Syro-Iradi Church and the Democratic Party of Irad administration have clashed over school curricula, and the church has cited the guarantees of religious freedom of the territorial period.^[8]
• Textbooks. ISEZ school textbooks present the founder of the Iradi church, Janyl, as a historical person and the Botai culture as the start of a continuous Iradi equestrian tradition. Academic historians, including some at Talas State University, have criticized both as conflating national tradition with evidence (see Botai Culture in Irad).^[13]
• The tribal regions. Aid agencies and the United Nations Mission in Irad (UNMI) report shortages of teachers and books in the ATR and low secondary enrollment, which the clan councils attribute to the restrictions on movement and trade across the line.^[3]

See also

• Iradi Language
• Talas State University
• Nurzhan Polytechnic Institute
• Demographics of Irad

References

1. ^ Journal of Central Asian Linguistics (2022). 'Orthographic Reform and Toponymic Restoration in Irad.' Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 88–104.
2. ^ Department of Public Information (2019). 2018 Census of Irad: Methodology and Results. Talas.
3. ^ United Nations Mission in Irad (2023). Humanitarian Access across the Qara-Chik Line: Annual Review. Kara-Oi.
4. ^ Talas State University Press (2011). Iradistan: A History of the Iradi SSR, 1925–1991. Talas.
5. ^ Talas State University (2023). Annual Report of the Rector. Talas.
6. ^ Territorial Office of Education (1994). Annual Report on Public Instruction. Talas.
7. ^ Human Rights Watch (2024). 'Water Cannon and Silence: The Policing of the 2023 Talas Protests.' New York.
8. ^ Archeparchy of Iyık Janyl (2023). Annuario: Clergy, Parishes and Institutions. Iyık Janyl.
9. ^ City of Nurzhan, Department of Education (2022). Vocational Education in Nurzhan. Nurzhan.
10. ^ Central Asian Geopolitical Review (2020). 'Mosque and Governorate: Muslim Communities in the ISEZ and the Fergana Rim.' Vol. 26, pp. 58–81.
11. ^ Eurasian Political Quarterly (2019). 'Engineers of the Russos: Language, Oil and the Nurzhan Polytechnic.' Vol. 26, No. 4, pp. 288–311.
12. ^ Talas State University Press (2018). Clan and Kurultai: Governance in the Autonomous Tribal Regions. Talas.
13. ^ Central Asian Geopolitical Review (2019). 'Exhibiting the Nation: Museums and Memory in Irad.' Vol. 25, pp. 91–110.