Inter-Regional Mobility of School Students: Trends and Evidence from Kazakhstan

Purpose of the research – To examine inter-regional student mobility in Kazakhstan, focusing on flows toward the two dominant metropolitan centres, Astana and Almaty.

Methodology – Using administrative data from the National Educational Database covering the full population of students enrolled in general education schools from 2019 to 2025, the authors construct a longitudinal panel of approximately 20 million student-year observations spanning six transition periods and estimate linear probability models with oblast and year fixed effects.

Originality / value of the research – This is the first individual-level analysis of inter-regional student mobility in Kazakhstan; its findings carry implications for capacity planning in receiving regions and talent retention strategies in net-sending regions.

Findings – Student mobility toward the two cities is socially stratified students attending private schools, selective schools, and those not receiving targeted social assistance are significantly more likely to move, and private school attendance more than doubles the baseline mobility probability. The determinants differ between destinations: Russian-medium students are less likely to move to Astana but more likely to move to Almaty, reflecting distinct linguistic profiles of the two cities. School-level models confirm that mobility is concentrated within specific institutional types, with R-squared values reaching 0.31–0.39 compared to less than 0.01 at the individual level, while net flow analysis shows Astana absorbed over 52,000 students during the study period, with annual inflows tripling from 2020 to 2025.

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