2022
Prestige or necessity: why Kyrgyzstani rural school leavers choose to be teachers
Country/area: Kyrgyzstan
Organisation: The association of legal entities “Community Mass Media Association”
Organisation size: Small
Publication date: 17/11/2021
Credit: Zyinat Samar kyzy, Kasiet Kubanychbek kyzy
Biography:
Zyinat Samar kyzy and Kasiet Kubanych kyzy are journalists at The association of legal entities “Community Mass Media Association” (https://ru.kyrgyzmedia.kg/) that trained on data journalism and publishing content with mentor’s support under the Data Journalism Program implemented by Internews in Kyrgyzstan.
Project description:
The newsroom released a story about rural youth choice on education and why they want to be a teacher, is this a prestige or necessity. Almost each fifth applicant in Bishkek choose IT, but rural applicants choose to be a profession in education sphere. Expert in education shared information that rural youth choose education due State budgetary stipends for students learnining educational profesions. Also, rural school education is in a low range and applicants have low graduate scores that allow them to apply to educational professions. Journalists find out gender aspect, girls mostly apply to teachers and boys choose technical
Impact reached:
This story was published on Local communities’ website that published data-story under Data Journalism Program support by Internews Network in Kyrgyzstan. Due to the small audience size and date of publication – November 17, 2021, this publication has one republication on the nationwide website Kaktus.Media.
Techniques/technologies used:
The charts were set in DataWrapper online tool with embedded code for website.
What was the hardest part of this project?
This story was published by Data Journalism Program fellows (supported by Internews) – journalists are working at the media outlet that publishing content for regions and rural area in Kyrgyzstan. Journalists made some findings such as: one of the most popular profession that students applied is a teacher; and reasons for this choise are due to poverty, low level of rural education and gender stereotypes. The authors dive with readers into deep reasons of the issues, and explaining it by data.
What can others learn from this project?
Using open data with its simple structure (mostly in xls. format) journalists could create a data story that explaining problems in society: lack of access to education, gender stereotypes and poverty.
