Academic Integrity League Hosts Landmark Forum: Charting a Course for Integrity and Educational Development in Kazakhstan

AKTOBE, Kazakhstan – June 27, 2025 – The Academic Integrity League (the League) successfully held its Forum titled "All Aboard: Steering Towards Academic Integrity and Regional University Development," a significant event in the country's educational agenda. The event took place at K. Zhubanov Aktobe Regional University, which chairs the League's General Assembly for the 2024–2025 academic year. The Forum gathered approximately 40 leaders from Kazakhstan's leading universities, along with representatives from the Anti-Corruption Agency, the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the RK, and the Akimat of Aktobe Region.

A Year of Extensive Work and New Horizons of Cooperation

Over the past year, the League has undertaken extensive and systematic work to strengthen partnerships with state structures and promote academic integrity principles at the national level. A key event was the signing of the Memorandum on the Development of Academic Integrity in Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan on December 9, 2024, which laid the foundation for building a sustainable ethical infrastructure in education. At the forum, Nurgul Nurlan, Head of the League's Project Office, presented the year's activities, focusing on the progress achieved and the strengthened systemic approach to transforming the culture of academic integrity.

Implementing Academic Integrity at All Levels of Education

In collaboration with state bodies and leading educational institutions, the League is building a unified vertical for implementing academic integrity principles—from school level to higher education. As part of this work, a Roadmap for 2024–2026 was developed, and a Joint Working Group was created, uniting the efforts of the League, the Ministry of Science and Higher Education, the Ministry of Education, and the Anti-Corruption Agency. The university monitoring standard has been updated to reflect international best practices, particularly AIRS 2.0, making assessment procedures more transparent, fair, and adapted to Kazakhstan's realities. Concurrently, standards for monitoring in secondary schools and colleges, including technical and vocational education (TVET) institutions, are under development, aiming to form a unified, ethically oriented system for evaluating educational quality.

The League places special emphasis on regional cooperation: meetings are held with akimats, and heads of "Bilim-Innovation" lyceums and Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools, fostering the deep integration of the League's approaches into specific educational institutions. A pilot list of schools and colleges is being formed, with the implementation of new academic monitoring standards planned for launch by the end of 2025.

Future Plans: Innovation and Development

The forum also served as a platform for discussing strategic directions for the near future. Priorities include developing criteria for a future online platform for academic integrity, training regional specialists, conducting self-assessments and external evaluations using checklists, completing the piloting of standards, and adopting the methodology at the state level, which will be a logical continuation of previously achieved agreements.

The forum held in Aktobe not only strengthened the League's position but also inspired all participants to take new steps towards fostering an honest, open, and fair educational environment. The Academic Integrity League continues to firmly pursue its course, uniting the efforts of the state, universities, and schools for a future where educational quality is impossible without trust, fairness, and ethics.

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