Tag Archives: education

Armenian lecturers quit

DEC. 1 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Roughly 120 university lecturers in Armenia born since 1974 have quit their jobs because of government plans to change the pension system, the London-based NGO Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) said. IWPR said this equalled about a quarter of the total number of university academics under the age of 45 in Armenia.

ENDS

Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 211, published on Dec. 3 2014)

Kyrgyzstan starts anti-IS campaign

NOV. 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – The local authorities in Kyrgyzstan have started a public education campaign to try to stop people from heading to Syria to join up with the extremist group Islamic State, media reported. Central Asian states have been alarmed at the increase in the number of recruits heading to Syria.

ENDS

Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 210, published on Nov. 26 2014)

 

Historian of Great Game dies

LONDON/United Kingdom, SEPT. 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — A natural adventurer, story-teller and Central Asia historian, the British author Peter Hopkirk died aged on Aug. 22 aged 83.

Hopkirk was a foreign correspondent for various British newspaper who developed a niche specialisation in later life writing about the so-called Great Gamers of Central Asia.

The first of these books was the seminal ‘Foreign devils on the Silk Road: The search for the lost cities and treasures of Chinese Central Asia’, published in 1980.

Widely acclaimed this book was followed by five more on Central Asia, including Hopkirk’s most well-known book ‘The Great Game: On Secret Service in High Asia’, published in 1990.

These books first brought to the public’s attention the high stakes game played out in the late 19th century between mainly British and Russian agents in Central Asia. This important part of imperial history had been largely overlooked by modern historians until Hopkirk’s books.

His stories were made more remarkable because most were written and researched while Central Asia was still part of the Soviet Union. He once described how he had to play games of his own with various minders to grab interviews or delve into an archive for information.

It’s hard to over-state Hopkirk’s contribution to our understanding of Central Asia and its importance in the world, as the publisher noted in a brief blurb to his fifth book ‘On Secret service east of Constitnople’ published in 1994.

“Pieced together from the secret intelligence reports of the day and the long-forgotten memoirs of the participants, Peter Hopkirk’s latest narrative is an enthralling sequel to his best-selling ‘The Great Game’ and three earlier works’,” it said.

“It is also highly topical in view of recent events in the region where the Great Game has never really ceased.”

ENDS

Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 201, published on Sept. 24 2014)

 

Armenian invests in education

SEPT. 11 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Armenia’s parliament ratified two loan deals with the International Development Association (IDA) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) worth $30m to modernise the state education system, media reported.

ENDS

Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 200, published on Sept.17 2014)

 

Curriculum to change in Kazakhstan

JUNE 20 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) – Kazakhstan will trial a pilot project to change its national education curriculum away from the Soviet style rote learning to one based on the West’s critical thinking and problem solving, media reported. The step is, potentially, a major step in a much needed educational overhaul.

 ENDS

Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 190, published on June 25 2014)

 

University corruption grows in Kazakhstan

APRIL 30 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Corruption at universities in Kazakhstan is now so endemic that it has become an industry worth $100m a year, media reported quoting the ministry of education. Buying a decent grade in an exam costs about $300. Corruption is still rampant in Kazakhstan despite the government’s attempts to stamp it out.

ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 183, published on May 7 2014)

Uzbek language dropped in Kyrgyz exams

MARCH 13 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — The authorities in Kyrgyzstan dropped Uzbek as a language that secondary school students can sit their graduation exams in, media reported. Kyrgyzstan’s education ministry said the number of students choosing to sit their exams in Uzbek was just too low. Human rights campaigners have said that Uzbeks have been increasingly marginalised in Kyrgyzstan.

ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 176, published on March 19 2014)

Student protest new credit system in Azerbaijan

FEB. 24 2014 (The Conway Bulletin) — Roughly 500 students at Baku University demonstrated against a new credit system which they said was just another way of trying to increase tuition fees, media reported. According to reports, police detained 12 students. Sizeable protests against the authorities in Azerbaijan are relatively rare.

ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 173, published on Feb. 26 2014)

Kazakh president’s daughter goes against children

DEC. 10 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Dariga Nazarbayeva, the eldest daughter of Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, is a growing, some would say, looming, presence on Kazakhstan’s political scene.

Sidelined in 2007 after her husband, Rakhat Aliyev, fell out with her father, she has recently staged a comeback. From January 2012, Ms Nazarbayeva has been a member of Kazakhstan’s parliament and head of various committees.

Importantly for Kazakhstan-watchers, she’s also been spoken of in some circles as a potential successor to her 73-year-old father.

And that’s why comments she made on sex education in schools and the effectiveness of orphanages generated such a heated response. Kazakh media also reported that she described disabled children as “freaks” birthed from teenagers having premature sex.

“I think that from time to time children should be taken for excursions to orphanages, to institutions for disabled children, so that they see the results of a senseless, premature sex life,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty quoted Ms Nazarbayeva as saying at a parliamentary committee.

“Show them these children, these disabled freaks, let them look at them.”

Twitter caught fire with plenty of venom directed at Ms Nazarbayeva. If Ms Nazarbayeva does have presidential ambitions she will have to learn to be more discreet.

ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 165, published on Dec. 18 2013)

Turkmenistan drops the Rukhnama

AUG. 1 2013 (The Conway Bulletin) — Turkmen officials have pulled the quasi-religious book written by former President Saparmurat Niyazov from the national curriculum, media reported. The autocratic Niyazov ruled Turkmenistan from independence in 1991 until he died in 2006. He wrote Rukhnama in 2001 and insisted that school children studied it.

ENDS
Copyright ©The Conway Bulletin — all rights reserved

(News report from Issue No. 146, published on Aug. 5 2013)