If you got a good math education at school, you are more likely to go to a strong university and then find an interesting, high-paying job. Graduates of the best Russian schools of physics and mathematics now head government agencies and major private companies.

But how do you know which schools are the best? To make it easier for parents to navigate, we, with the support of Kaspi.kz, a leading Kazakh fintech company, have prepared another ranking of math schools in Kazakhstan.

Similar ratings were published in 2017 et 2020 years. At that time, we used two main evaluation criteria: the number of medals and awards at international Olympiads; UNT scores were general and directly in mathematics.

Now the methodology has changed, because the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan no longer provides data on the UNT and banned school ratings based on the results of the UNT. The Ministry believes that this will help protect students from the ambitions of school leaders and protect the interests of students, regardless of their level of performance.

The new ranking is based solely on the results of international online and offline Olympiads, such as the Republican Olympiad, the Silk Road Mathematics Olympiad, the International Zhautykov Olympiad (IZHO), the Asia-Pacific Mathematical Olympiad, the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO), the Balkan Mathematical Olympiad (BMO), the Leonard Euler Olympiad and others.

♦ 1 Methodology

Which schools are participating in the ranking? - All schools in Kazakhstan whose students received medals or certificates at international Olympiads in 2020-2021.

How were school scores calculated? - The school was awarded 10 points for the gold medal, 7 points for the silver medal, 5 points for the bronze medal, and 1 point for the diploma. Thus, the total score for each school was formed.

How were places distributed if the final score of several schools was the same? - A higher place in the ranking was given to a school with a higher rank. If this figure also coincided, participating schools shared their seats equally.

♦ 2 Results

The final ranking of medal schools includes 48 educational institutions from 15 cities and 2 villages of the Republic of Kazakhstan. Among these schools were both Republican Physics and Mathematics Schools (the school located in Almaty took first place, and the one in Nur-Sultan took fifth place in the ranking), 14 Bilim Innovation lyceums (including the Lyceum in Nur-Sultan, which took second place in the ranking), 10 Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools (including the NIS of Physics and Mathematics in Almaty, which is closed top three). In addition to RFMS, BIL and NIS, Haileybury International School located in Almaty was among the top five.

Overall, according to the ranking, the country's top ten Olympic match schools operate in Almaty, and seven educational institutions each operate in Nur-Sultan and Pavlodar.

Regional schools included the specialized lyceum “Arystan”, located in the village of Beskainar, Almaty region (33rd place), and school No. 5 named after M. Zhambyl Kapparova, who works in the village of Atbulak, Turkestan Province (36th place in the ranking, along with three other educational institutions).

♦ 3 Kaspi Lab

For 8 years, Kaspi.kz has been conducting its own educational project, Kaspi Lab. Project participants study Data Science using specific examples from Kaspi.kz's daily practice. To get into the project, you need to go through a strict selection process — complete test tasks and get an interview.

The average competition for one study place at Kaspi Lab is 60 people. Over the entire existence of the project, 35,000 applications have been submitted for participation. As a result of the selection, 570 people were admitted and trained.

At the end of each Kaspi Lab, the strongest students receive an invitation to work at Kaspi. The rest of the laboratory's graduates are in demand by other leading companies in the country.

In 2022, 60 people were trained at Kaspi Lab. The training program includes:

  • Data analysis and visualization;
  • Forecasting and statistics;
  • Programming in Python, SAS Base;
  • SQL, Hadoop, Kafka;
  • Machine Learning (NLP, CV).

It is not necessary to have a mathematical background in order to solve Data Science problems. But mathematics helps develop logical and structural thinking, so a school under their belt is always a plus for students. And the main advantage is the desire to learn, to make your life and the life of your country better and more interesting.

Direct link to the article https://tengrinews.kz/science/reyting-matematicheskih-shkol-kazahstana-2022-472216/

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