ASTANA – Kazakh high school students can now prepare to launch their own businesses through the Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship elective course, which will be offered for the 2019 to 2020 academic year. The process of textbook approbation will start this year at educational institutions across the country, Vice Minister of Education and Science Askhat Aimagambetov told a recent press conference at the Central Communications Service.
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Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship is an elective course that will be offered to students in the 10th and 11th grades.
Aimagambetov noted that university representatives, experts, business people, Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools delegates as well as international companies took part in developing and establishing the course curricula.
“The programme is created with the application of both theory and practice. Forty percent of the course will include theory, 15 percent will involve case analysis and the remaining 45 percent is practice. Within the course, students will acquire self-presentation and promotion skills,” said Aimagambetov.
The developers intend to make the course material as engaging and informative as possible. Over two academic years, students will have 68 lessons on this subject.
“The course is going to help high school students understand the basics of taxing, accounting, financial statements and VAT [value added tax]. The terms are going to be explained by simple and concrete examples, through games and practical exercises. Some tasks will include the creation of a mobile application, how to sell a product, so that students will possess a capacity to start their own business independently,” said Baurzhan Orazgaliyev, head of the department for Business Communication Development in the state language at the Atameken National Chamber of Entrepreneurs.
Solving case studies and addressing theoretical questions are necessary skills that will allow student to launch their own businesses in the future, Aimagambetov said. After university, instead of being confined to seeking office jobs, they’ll have the tools to help them realise their own ideas.
The major goal is to develop a creative mindset and reasoning skills in students. School children will study the fundamentals of business through the cases of online, short-form video creators and marketers as well as young entrepreneurs, he added.
The course was introduced in a pilot mode at schools in Kokshetau and Aktobe in 2017.
