Welcome to teaching in NIS Kazakhstan !!!
Recently landed a job at an NIS school in Kazakhstan ?? You are in for the experience of a lifetime !! Read on !!
I started teaching in 1985, and now have 34 years experience teaching Biology and Science up to and including A level. From 2015 until 2017 I taught in Kazakhstan. Based upon my personal experiences at NIS Shymkent, Biology and Chemistry, with the Principal/Director being Mr Balkan Kassimov, Vice Principal Dinara Akhmetova and the International Vice-Principal being firstly Richard Evans and then Jennifer MacKenzie (married named Wemyss), the SUBSTANTIAL good points are as follows :
1. Your monthly pay will be between $ 4,000 and $ 5,000 per month, depending on your location in Kazakhstan. In Shymkent it is $5,000 per month. This is many times more than the Principal/Director of the school, Balkan Kassimov. Hence the jealousy.
2. You will have an apartment with all bills paid, including heating, electricity, WIFI and satellite TV. It may be old Soviet style or more modern but it will be comfortable. However, landlords regularly fail to pay Internet bills. Immediate cut off is common. Some international colleagues had this problem every month, meaning that they could not contact family for a few days at the beginning of every month.
3. I lived and worked in the southern city of Shymkent where I saved 95 % of my salary of $5,000 per month. I ate out at restaurants at least 4 times per week.You will have great shops and supermarkets. You can buy everything and anything. It is much more expensive to live in the capital city Astana aka Nur-Sultan.
4. You will teach the best pupils BY FAR you will ever meet in your professional career, ANYWHERE in the World. They are incredibly dedicated, talented and motivated. Kazakhstan is in safe hands with these young people coming through to replace the retrograde, negative mindset of the school management.
5. The Kazakh teaching colleagues you work with will be the most dedicated, hard working and professionally qualified people you will meet anywhere in the World. They are severely undervalued and maltreated by school management.
6. If you make a genuine effort to embrace Kazakh culture, customs and people, you will be welcomed with open arms, and you will make friends for life. This is much more rewarding than the false friendships, inflated egos, vacuous personalities and alcoholic artisans that permeate the ex-pat circles. For some, work interferes with their daily drinking schedule.
7. Your flights to and from home will be re-imbursed....eventually and USUALLY. BUT not always. Be prepared to meet idiotic administrative requests, based on nothing but triviality, jealousy and the wielding of power. Why ? Because they can....
The MASSIVE bad points are :
1. The school Director, Balkan Kassimov, REPEATEDLY publicly harangued International Teachers, in weekly full staff meetings, in the presence of all their KZ teaching colleagues, about the 'huge' wages paid to us, asking why, and what value we Internationals were to the school. Balkan Kassimov did this, repeatedly, in any language but English. What a guy ! This was a weekly public display of ignorance of monumental proportions, and an entirely accurate reflection of everyday KZ management that Internationals can expect to meet in NIS schools. It was also a very, very poor reflection upon the good people of Kazakhstan. Here he is .....
2. To be re-imbursed flight monies that you have paid out of your own pocket, you will be treated like a criminal, thief and liar. It is a game the school management play simply because they can. When you leave your posting, they will 'lose' your flights paperwork, AFTER you return to your home country. They will demand that you replace it. You will not get reimbursed otherwise. This happened to all four International teachers when we left this NIS Shymkent school in June 2017. The International Vice-Principal, Jennifer Mackenzie (now Wemyss), and Vice Principal Dinara Akhmetova were responsible for this paperwork.
It was only AFTER I wrote this review of my NIS school, and emailed it to NIS HQ in Astana, and to International and National Newspapers around the World, that these buffoons were ordered to pay me my money by NIS Head Office in Astana. Jennifer Mackenzie, Balkan Kassimov and Dinara Akhmetova had previously sent me a jointly signed letter saying, 'bugger off'.
3. The management/administration (especially Director Balkan Kassimov and Vice Principal Dinara Akhmetova) is the most power crazy, crack-pot, corrosive, inept, damaging, incompetent and counter-productive you will meet in any educational establishment globally. They are intoxicated with power. Their management style is utterly immersed in the repressive totalitarian past. Their 'modus operandi' stymies and crushes individual talent, creativity and enthusiasm in the brilliantly professional and dedicated Kazakh teachers. Such management behaviour is a negative and titanic stumbling block to the fine aspirations of these NIS schools.
Managers with such a mindset are a very poor reflection upon what modern Kazakhstan is striving to achieve. Certain other countries would be ideally suited for the management style of these people.
4. You will earn every penny, teaching pupils from 8.00 am until 5.00 pm (and later) five days per week. There will be pressure put upon you to come in to teach at weekends, outside contractual hours, and without pay.
5. The best NIS assets - the wonderfully talented and qualified Kazakh teachers - are queueing up to leave. They are driven to the exit door by a myopic, regressive and manically punitive management - a management who are simply much too inexperienced, and utterly devoid of the basic management skills, vision and talent needed in a cohesive, modern, collegiate educational establishment.
6. You will receive minimal backup from your International Vice Principal at the school. You are on your own. Where they find their next alcoholic drink is their number one priority. Every day.
10. People are simply handed jobs with massive responsibility. Your Kazakh colleague may disappear out of your department.....and will appear as a new Vice Principal. Six months later - or sooner - they will be removed.
11. Senior International posts within the school - craving for people with good experience, academic ability, interpersonal skills and mental stability - are awarded without advertising and without interviews, on a 'nudge nudge, wink wink' (or 'nudge nudge, drink drink') basis. Jennifer Mackenzie (now Wemyss), the current International Vice Principal at Shymkent NIS Biology and Chemistry school, was handed the job in June 2017. POOF !...that's magic !
14. FINALLY, Kazakh banks are GANGSTERS !! Foreign workers earning good money are seen are targets. Your account will be a targeted by internal fraudsters. I will leave you to find out how and why.
Recently landed a job at an NIS school in Kazakhstan ?? You are in for the experience of a lifetime !! Read on !!
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| Myself at the NIS Biology and Chemistry, Shymkent, South Kazakhstan |
I started teaching in 1985, and now have 34 years experience teaching Biology and Science up to and including A level. From 2015 until 2017 I taught in Kazakhstan. Based upon my personal experiences at NIS Shymkent, Biology and Chemistry, with the Principal/Director being Mr Balkan Kassimov, Vice Principal Dinara Akhmetova and the International Vice-Principal being firstly Richard Evans and then Jennifer MacKenzie (married named Wemyss), the SUBSTANTIAL good points are as follows :
1. Your monthly pay will be between $ 4,000 and $ 5,000 per month, depending on your location in Kazakhstan. In Shymkent it is $5,000 per month. This is many times more than the Principal/Director of the school, Balkan Kassimov. Hence the jealousy.
2. You will have an apartment with all bills paid, including heating, electricity, WIFI and satellite TV. It may be old Soviet style or more modern but it will be comfortable. However, landlords regularly fail to pay Internet bills. Immediate cut off is common. Some international colleagues had this problem every month, meaning that they could not contact family for a few days at the beginning of every month.
3. I lived and worked in the southern city of Shymkent where I saved 95 % of my salary of $5,000 per month. I ate out at restaurants at least 4 times per week.You will have great shops and supermarkets. You can buy everything and anything. It is much more expensive to live in the capital city Astana aka Nur-Sultan.
4. You will teach the best pupils BY FAR you will ever meet in your professional career, ANYWHERE in the World. They are incredibly dedicated, talented and motivated. Kazakhstan is in safe hands with these young people coming through to replace the retrograde, negative mindset of the school management.
5. The Kazakh teaching colleagues you work with will be the most dedicated, hard working and professionally qualified people you will meet anywhere in the World. They are severely undervalued and maltreated by school management.
6. If you make a genuine effort to embrace Kazakh culture, customs and people, you will be welcomed with open arms, and you will make friends for life. This is much more rewarding than the false friendships, inflated egos, vacuous personalities and alcoholic artisans that permeate the ex-pat circles. For some, work interferes with their daily drinking schedule.
7. Your flights to and from home will be re-imbursed....eventually and USUALLY. BUT not always. Be prepared to meet idiotic administrative requests, based on nothing but triviality, jealousy and the wielding of power. Why ? Because they can....
The MASSIVE bad points are :
1. The school Director, Balkan Kassimov, REPEATEDLY publicly harangued International Teachers, in weekly full staff meetings, in the presence of all their KZ teaching colleagues, about the 'huge' wages paid to us, asking why, and what value we Internationals were to the school. Balkan Kassimov did this, repeatedly, in any language but English. What a guy ! This was a weekly public display of ignorance of monumental proportions, and an entirely accurate reflection of everyday KZ management that Internationals can expect to meet in NIS schools. It was also a very, very poor reflection upon the good people of Kazakhstan. Here he is .....
Balkan Kassimov- Director/Principal (Current)
It was only AFTER I wrote this review of my NIS school, and emailed it to NIS HQ in Astana, and to International and National Newspapers around the World, that these buffoons were ordered to pay me my money by NIS Head Office in Astana. Jennifer Mackenzie, Balkan Kassimov and Dinara Akhmetova had previously sent me a jointly signed letter saying, 'bugger off'.
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Dinara Akhmetova- Vice Principal (Current)
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3. The management/administration (especially Director Balkan Kassimov and Vice Principal Dinara Akhmetova) is the most power crazy, crack-pot, corrosive, inept, damaging, incompetent and counter-productive you will meet in any educational establishment globally. They are intoxicated with power. Their management style is utterly immersed in the repressive totalitarian past. Their 'modus operandi' stymies and crushes individual talent, creativity and enthusiasm in the brilliantly professional and dedicated Kazakh teachers. Such management behaviour is a negative and titanic stumbling block to the fine aspirations of these NIS schools.
Managers with such a mindset are a very poor reflection upon what modern Kazakhstan is striving to achieve. Certain other countries would be ideally suited for the management style of these people.
4. You will earn every penny, teaching pupils from 8.00 am until 5.00 pm (and later) five days per week. There will be pressure put upon you to come in to teach at weekends, outside contractual hours, and without pay.
5. The best NIS assets - the wonderfully talented and qualified Kazakh teachers - are queueing up to leave. They are driven to the exit door by a myopic, regressive and manically punitive management - a management who are simply much too inexperienced, and utterly devoid of the basic management skills, vision and talent needed in a cohesive, modern, collegiate educational establishment.
6. You will receive minimal backup from your International Vice Principal at the school. You are on your own. Where they find their next alcoholic drink is their number one priority. Every day.
7. Get used to crackpot change, almost every day. Classes will appear, disappear and reappear daily. You will be asked to design courses that will never be run. You will NOT have a teaching timetable at the beginning of the term. It often changes daily, when you do get it. We had a timetable that changed THREE times in one day, with dinner break down to 15 minutes. This was withdrawn after it was pointed out that this was illegal under Kazakhstan's very own Labour Laws.
8. Trade Unions are illegal in these schools. Your KZ teaching colleagues who complain to management simply disappear from the workplace - sacked. Be warned. Take a visit to the 'Museum of Repression' in Shymkent. Another new wing should be opened.
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| Museum of Repression, Shymkent, Kazakhstan |
9. Management in the school works entirely on fear and an informal spy network. Kazakh staff who inform, thrive and prosper within the school. Be careful what you say to family and friends on WHATSAPP and SKYPE, as they are monitored by the internal KZ police, the KNB (during Soviet times, the KGB). They will make themselves known to you in bars and restaurants, as foreigners are a big curiosity. They are quite a friendly bunch - usually.
10. People are simply handed jobs with massive responsibility. Your Kazakh colleague may disappear out of your department.....and will appear as a new Vice Principal. Six months later - or sooner - they will be removed.
12. If you have a heavy alcohol drinking habit, you will thrive in this environment. The ex-pat management will love and welcome you. It will be an excuse for them to drink even more heavily. Amongst these ex-pats I met some outstanding professionals, as well as habitual drunks, serial adulterers, back stabbers and penny pinching misery guts.
Kazakh pupils, and teachers, confided regularly to me about certain International teachers reeking of alcohol in the morning.
The Kazakh teachers proved themselves to be very shrewd judges of International teachers. In private, they do not hold back on their views.
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| Richard Evans, ex International Vice Principal, hic |
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| Shymkent NIS Chemistry teacher, Mark Clarke, hic. |
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| They enjoy MONDAY |
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| They enjoy TUESDAY a bit more |
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| They slow down on WEDNESDAY |
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| They ALMOST stop on THURSDAY |
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| They love FRIDAY |
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| And they party on SATURDAY AND SUNDAY |
13. There is an inherent culture of tolerated exam cheating alien to teachers from Western educational systems.
14. FINALLY, Kazakh banks are GANGSTERS !! Foreign workers earning good money are seen are targets. Your account will be a targeted by internal fraudsters. I will leave you to find out how and why.
So....the choice is yours !!!
I had 2 interesting AND successful years from 2015 to 2017...and was offered a third. I declined.
