Atyrau, 23 October. The Nazarbayev Intellectual School in Atyrau has terminated the employment contract of a basic military training teacher after reviewing his messages to a 17-year-old pupil, whom, according to her family, he had asked out on a date; the grounds given were an immoral act, the press service of the autonomous educational organisation Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools told Ulysmedia.kz.
The story became known on 23 October from a post on Threads. The pupil's relatives said that the 34-year-old teacher obtained the girl's phone number through a classmate and messaged her on WhatsApp, including after 10 p.m.: he asked what she was doing and whether she had eaten, advised her to dress warmly and then suggested meeting. When one of her friends called him and asked why a grown man was talking to an underage pupil this way, the teacher, according to the family, said he had been joking and that he had a wife and children. Relatives say he repeated the same explanation in the head teacher's office.
In its first response, Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools said that the school security service was examining the circumstances described in the post in line with its student protection policy. The materials were then reviewed by a disciplinary committee. "Following the review and the consideration of the materials by the disciplinary committee, the employment contract with the teacher was terminated for committing an immoral act incompatible with continued teaching, on the basis of subparagraph 14) of paragraph 1 of Article 52 of the Labour Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan," Ulysmedia.kz quoted the press service as saying.
The pupil's family does not intend to stop there: according to relatives, her father will seek an official investigation and a legal assessment of what happened. Relatives and the parents of classmates fear that dismissal from one school will not stop the teacher from getting a job at another. The sources do not say whether the parents went to the police or whether any proceedings have been opened.
What it means: The school acted quickly: the review and the dismissal took a single day after the messages were published on social media. But dismissal is an employment measure, not a legal assessment; whether the teacher's conduct gives grounds for a police inquiry is not yet known.
Who benefits: The pupil and her family: the teacher no longer works at the school. Parents of other pupils get a signal that complaints about teachers' behaviour are acted upon. The sources leave open whether the dismissed teacher can work with children elsewhere.
Background: Subparagraph 14) of paragraph 1 of Article 52 of the Labour Code entitles an employer to terminate the contract of a teacher for an immoral act incompatible with continued work. Nazarbayev Intellectual Schools is a network of schools with the special status of an autonomous educational organisation; a basic military training teacher teaches civil defence and the basics of military service.
List of sources used: Ulysmedia.kz, Qumash.kz, Informburo.kz, Zakon.kz
Artificial intelligence was used in preparing this material.
