Opinion: Kazakhstan Is Betting on AI to Close Its Rural Education Gap. Is the Infrastructure Ready?
PISA 2022 exposed a persistent divide between Kazakhstan’s urban and rural schools. Students in rural schools trailed their urban counterparts by 18 points in mathematical literacy and 26 points in science. The gaps had narrowed since 2018, but they remained substantial. Kazakhstan is now betting that artificial intelligence can help narrow them further. On September 1, the government launched a pilot project in ten small rural schools in the Pavlodar and Kyzylorda regions. More than 50 fourth-grade students are taking part. The project is expected to expand in stages to about 2,600 small rural schools by July 2028. The potential is considerable. Students in remote communities can gain access to stronger teaching, more varied educational material, and learning tools that respond to their individual needs. But AI will not close Kazakhstan’s rural education gap by itself. Its success will depend on something less glamorous: reliable infrastructure and teachers who are properly prepared to use it. What AI Can Do, and What Distance Learning Does President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has argued that digital technology can help reduce differences in educational opportunity between cities and the regions. In his 2025 State of the Nation Address, he called for a small-school model based on distance learning and AI that would give rural students access to high-quality educational materials. The distinction between those two elements is important. In the current Qazaq Digital Mektebi model, experienced teachers in Astana deliver live online lessons from a specially equipped studio, while local teachers remain in the classroom to support students. That is distance learning. The AI layer has a different role: it analyzes students’ responses, identifies gaps in their knowledge, and helps teachers determine who needs additional support. This combination could be particularly valuable in small rural schools. Kazakhstan has about 2,600 such schools, and some classes have only five or six students. Recruiting an experienced specialist for every subject is difficult in many remote communities. Online teaching can widen access to expertise, while AI can help make that teaching more responsive to individual students. Used well, AI can assess a student’s pace, identify areas of weakness, and adjust exercises to an appropriate level. That could help move schools away from a uniform approach in which every student receives the same material regardless of progress. It can also give local teachers more information about where additional attention is needed. But this should not be confused with replacing teachers. The most promising feature of the pilot is precisely that it combines technology with human instruction. AI can process patterns in student performance, but teachers still have to interpret those signals, understand the child, and decide how to respond. Infrastructure Comes Before Ambition That model depends on infrastructure that cannot be taken for granted. Around 67% of Kazakhstan’s schools are in rural areas, and roughly half of those are classified as small-enrollment schools. Digital education therefore has to work across a large and geographically dispersed network. Internet access has improved significantly, but connection quality remains uneven. In August 2025, Prime...
