Date: 22-05-2023

ISSA Welcomes a New member: CEF “School for All”, Kazakhstan

ISSA New Member Community Educational Foundation (CEF) “School for All” is one of the successful Kazakhstani NGOs that implements innovative educational initiatives based on democratic approach in teaching to make it more effective, meaningful, relevant and useful. The Foundation cooperates with other academic and research institutions in the country and abroad.

CEF “School for All” oversees projects with partner organizations relating to Inclusive education and teacher leadership, and advocates for policies to improve access and quality of education. Besides, the Foundation publishes academic articles and conducts qualitative and quantitative research to learn about current issues, improvements and other aspects of the education sector. Moreover, CEF “School for All” provides in-service training and mentoring for teachers of all levels, develops and publishes methodological guides and teaching materials, attends and presents at the local and international academic conferences.

“Through our last three years’ experience, we can share the idea of non-positional teacher leadership development that empower teachers as agents of change and help building innovation-friendly professional cultures in schools,” says Gulbadan Zakayeva, director of CEF “School for All”.

Becoming the ISSA Member, CEF “School for All” hopes to collaborate and build partnerships with the other members, share the information, promote good practices, design and apply joint proposals to the international organizations.

“We have achieved significant success in the development of inclusive education at the Higher School of Kazakhstan and we have made a crucial contribution to making the Inclusive Education course mandatory for all pedagogical specialties of universities in our country,” says Gulbadan Zakayeva, director of CEF “School for All”. We have developed and published a number of methodological materials, including the manual "Fundamentals of Inclusive Education", conducted more than 10 trainings on inclusive education and trained over than 300 teachers of pedagogical colleges and universities. During COVID-19, we have created an online course "Inclusive Education", which has become an important educational and information resource not only for students and university teachers, but has also become accessible and open to a wide range of stakeholders.”

In CEF “School for All” they strongly believe that their efforts and achievements will contribute to the development and transformation of education in Kazakhstan.