Grimaces of education in Kazakhstan · Global Voices
Adil Nurmakov

From June 01 to June 10 school graduates in Kazakhstan were undergoing Unified National Test (UNT) – the first and one of the most important tests in their lives.  As Zara, one of our bloggers, writes, the average test result has been 74.9 points, which is 7 points higher than the one for the last year. The number of graduates with excellent marks, who confirmed their knowledge, has increased from 36% in the last year to 54.5%.
“On the whole, the situation with UNT results over the country is more optimistic comparing to the previous years”, she notes [ru].
Sadenova gives her own calculations, based on the officially stated figures, and her conclusions are far less optimistic [ru]:
Analisys of UNT-2009 results shows that every 7th school graduate hasn’t scored the threshold of 45 points, every 9th school graduate scored over 100 points, and only 1 school graduate out of 13,500 scored the maximum of 125 points.
And lord-fame tells about rumored violations during the test.  Crib notes and mobile telephones used by the graduates are nothing, comparing to what is described below [ru]:
$ 300 – is the price fixed by local level some education officials and their cronies for not noticing a mobile telephone in the hands of a graduate passing the test. This price is valid for the provinces, and it's more expensive in Almaty and Astana. By paying $1000 you can be sure that your child will get teacher’s help in case of a difficult question.
Also posted on neweurasia.