Thirty new schools deserve one published budget

The new school in Nurzhan's Navbahor district, opened by the Lieutenant Governor on Monday, is a good building. It has 24 classrooms, room for about 720 pupils and a roof of solar panels that will cut its electricity bills. It is one of 30 schools and kindergartens the ISEZ programme is due to complete this year, and for families who have sent children to afternoon shifts for a generation, every one of them matters.

We know what the Navbahor school cost, IS 31.5 million, only because the figure appeared in papers put before Nurzhan city council's finance committee. We do not know what the programme as a whole costs, how many bids each school drew, or how the other 29 buildings compare. The Lieutenant Governor's office says each school's budget is approved by the council concerned and that a consolidated figure will appear in the 2027 budget papers. That is an answer about procedure, not about money already being spent.

There are practical reasons to publish more. The Navbahor building was finished three months late. A programme of this size will have other delays, and parents planning for next September need to know which schools will open and when. Nurzhan's education department says about 9,800 pupils still study in an afternoon shift there. Talas, Iyık Janyl and the district centres have their own waiting lists. A published timetable, school by school, would let families and councillors see whether the promise to end first-grade waiting lists by 2028 is on track.

There is also the matter of what is being promised. Officials have said every new school will be built to the Navbahor standard. An engineer at the Nurzhan Polytechnic Institute told this newspaper that the panels will cover far less of the school's needs in December than in June, and that the specification includes no batteries. That is no criticism of the design, which is a reasonable saving. But the public should hear plainly what the panels will do and what they will not.

We therefore ask the Lieutenant Governor's office for one document before the end of the year: a list of all 30 schools and kindergartens in this year's programme, with the contract price, the contractor, the number of bids, the planned and actual completion dates, and the number of places each provides. Much of this information already exists in council papers scattered across five districts and three cities. Bringing it together would cost little, and it would let the public see the programme as a whole.