Auyl Innovation Teacher

Auyl Innovation Teacher ("auyl" means "village") is a STEM/STEAM program for primary- and middle-school teachers at rural schools across Kazakhstan. Most of the thousands of rural schools in Kazakhstan are small, under-resourced schools, and rural students lag behind urban ones by 37 PISA points — roughly a year of schooling. The program addresses this gap directly — by training the teachers themselves.

The model rests on two pillars. The first is a bilingual online academy with eight courses: design thinking, the basics of STEM and engineering, AI and programming, creative problem-solving, coaching for teachers, 3D printing and prototyping, integrating STEM into the curriculum, and career guidance. The second is an annual national STEM-project competition run in two stages: an open call, followed by top teams working with STEM kits and mentors through to a final in Astana, where teams defend prototypes on topics ranging from green technology and agritech to the smart village.

A pilot cohort ran in 2024. Based on it, a three-year proposal has been developed to scale the program — targeting dozens of rural schools, hundreds of trained teachers and students, and an alumni network of the program.

Auyl Innovation Teacher is a flagship TransforNATION education initiative with a ready, replicable model: not a one-off effort, but a systemic response to structural inequality in access to quality education.