British international schools in Kazakhstan seem to attract geographers. With its breathtaking mountains and endless steppes, there’s something about the place.
John Coles, headmaster of Haileybury Astana, is one such geographer, and he couldn’t be more at home in the gleaming newbuild capital city where winter temperatures can drop to -35C.
As you might expect, he’s thrilled by the topography and the demographics of a post-Soviet country that has both gleaming modern cities, nomadic horsemen in yurts and a “melting pot” population of different cultures and ethnicities.
The country also provides easy resources to geography teachers: “I was teaching GCSE glaciation in Almaty, talking about glaciers in the Alps and I suddenly thought, why am I talking about that when they’re out the window?
“We thought, if we don’t do something now, we will stay in Surrey all our lives.”
“We would talk about earthquakes, talking about San Francisco, and I thought hang on, we’re in an active earthquake zone, our school is an earthquake designed building.”
Coles first came to Kazakhstan in 2018 when he was offered the post of head of senior school at Haileybury Almaty, in the south of the country. He had previously worked as head of geography at Haileybury UK from 2001 to 2010.
He and his French wife had been looking for adventure, after more than seven years at Tormead School in Guildford, where he was deputy head academic.
He says: “I just thought, I can stay in Surrey, which was very comfortable, I had the house, good job, estate car, child, I could be set up for life, but I got itchy feet…we thought if we don’t do something now, we will stay in Surrey all our lives.”
Knowing little about Kazakhstan, he regarded the move as “a gamble”, but his six years in the country suggest it has paid off.
“Kazakhstan is third in the world for robotics, there’s a huge hunger.”
After just over a year in Almaty he became acting headmaster at the school, holding the fort until August 2020 when the new head, Simon Mills, arrived.
He was then swiftly appointed to lead Haileybury Astana, the younger of the two schools, which was set up in 2011. It now has just under 700 pupils.
Following Covid he says he is now “much more focused on our strategic vision” for the school which is heavily driving STEAM subjects with science, technology and making.
“Kazakhstan is third in the world for robotics, there’s a huge hunger. It’s a developing nation, a young country, people are really entrepreneurial and they know that high tech is the future,” he says, pointing to the school’s links with the Astana Hub technology park which is now a Google startup centre.
Coles adds: “The children here are different to UK children. We had a speaker in today who’s 35, she went to Cambridge, and now she runs a multi-national company with 20,000 employees.
“The Government is much more willing to let you move forward at a faster pace.”
“Her words were ‘in the UK and America, things are very much set in place so it takes longer to do stuff’.
“Here, the Government is much more willing to let you move forward at a faster pace and if you find the right niche and market it doesn’t matter that you are in Kazakhstan because in the digital world you can access anybody. It’s a really fast-moving country.
“What’s helped it in these last 30 years, natural resources have allowed Kazakhstan to put in place infrastructure that you don’t find elsewhere in other central Asian countries such as superfast broadband. It attracts investment.”
He says that a lot of the pupils’ parents had gone from “very poor backgrounds to being successful business people”.
“They’ve seen their parents graft, they’re entrepreneurial and the children are hungry for this,” he adds.
The school offers the IB rather than A-levels, which allows the science and technology-focused students to get a rounded education choosing arts and humanities subjects alongside. Thankfully, the place of geography on the curriculum is safe.
“If the children don’t understand what you’re talking about, that’s a challenge.”
Coles is also driving the school’s involvement in the local community, loaning out its facilities to local organisations.
Last year, children from Astana took part in a music Olympiad at the school and there have been engineering and physics events, a chess competition and Rubik’s Cube cup, usually run by local students in other schools looking for a venue.
The US embassy is also using the school’s theatre to do a “West End” show as part of its English speaking programme for disadvantaged children.
“It’s really good to give back to the community,” says Coles, highlighting Haileybury’s full scholarship programme.
“We took one student whose parents had a combined monthly income of 400 dollars, by the time he’d gone through with us, he went to Oxbridge, we changed that boy’s life.
“We’ve got the power here to do that.”
Running a school with highly motivated pupils is a huge advantage, but what are the challenges of running an international school in Kazakhstan?
Haileybury Astana has 52 nationalities, including 65 per cent Kazakh nationals and 35 per cent ex-pat, mostly embassy, children.
“The challenge with any international school is your EAL provision, if the children don’t understand what you’re talking about, that’s a challenge.
“If you have 52 nationalities and every single parent has gone through a different education system they’re not always used to the UK-based education one.
“The majority of Kazakh parents have gone through a Soviet-based system. It was teacher led, so sometimes you have to explain to parents why we’re doing creative thinking work.”
“I feel more safe in Astana than I do in London,”
Recruiting staff is also an ongoing challenge: Potential new recruits often have questions about the exact location of the country, its safety and climate.
He says: “There’s a lot of misinformation if you’re in England and you search Astana you get a lot of negative press about it and you have to go out to the recruitment fairs and say actually this is what it’s like.”
Like Simon Mills in Almaty, he is always keen to stress the good standard of living, and travel and money-saving opportunities.
It is a Muslim-majority country but is “very different to the UAE”, Coles says, and very tolerant of different races and religions.
“I feel more safe in Astana than I do in London,” he adds.
Haileybury also has to compete in a difficult market for international teachers, who might find warmer climes more alluring.
Last minute “gazumping” by teachers receiving other offers is “an increasing trend” for many international schools, he says.
But their loss is clearly another teacher’s gain.
“Kazakhstan is a real hidden gem, but very few people know about it,” says Coles.
“My mum, who is 84, she still thinks I work in Afghanistan…”