In October 2015, British Council Kazakhstan held their annual exhibition in Astana, Almaty and Bishkek.

The number of visitors attending the exhibition for Almaty and Astana slightly decreased as compared to 2014. We believe that this was probably related to the difficult economic in Kazakhstan. However, many exhibitors noted that the quality of visitors improved as compared to previous years, with 65% per cent of exhibitors considering that visitors were both of good number and good quality. The exhibitions attracted a good number of high-quality visitors, with several exhibitors remarking that visitors’ English language skills have improved as compared to previous years.

Exhibitors noticed a growing interest in MA, PhD and Summer Schools in 2015, as well as business and Economics still remaining the number one area of interest among exhibition visitors. Several exhibitors also noted a growing interest in UK boarding schools and that there was less interest in, and queries about, scholarships than in previous years.

Most of the institutions came to the fair both for recruitment and for profile-raising purposes and 94 per cent of the exhibitors rated the exhibition as excellent and good (the figure was 88 per cent in 2014).