Enrichment clusters: educating for the real world

Abstract

Over the last three decades, there has been a dramatic change in the expectations the society holds about compulsory education. Contemporary education is expected to cultivate highorder thinking as well as to develop life skills and functional literacy in school graduates. However, public satisfaction and student performance on international testing are far below these expectations. Enrichment clusters (EC), which are group projects aimed to connect students to address real-life issues, could be an alternative solution to bridge the theoretical knowledge and practical skills that schools provide. This paper, therefore, aims to justify the importance of life skills education, to highlight the necessity to improve the quality of Kazakhstani secondary education, to compare two current models of life skills education, and to argue for EC to become an integral part of the secondary school curriculum to promote functional literacy.