Tamos Education Cambridge International School, Almaty

A very large multi-stream private school in Bostandyk, founded in 1998, with a Cambridge international track running alongside Kazakh and Russian language departments. One of the biggest private schools in the country at around 3,000 students.

The Cambridge stream runs IGCSE and A-Levels and is generally regarded as the strongest of the three departments. Campus is modern, with mountain views, swimming and arts facilities included in fees on paper.

Local parent feedback is split. Strong on the academic ceiling of the Cambridge programme and on the building itself. Recurring concerns are scale, frequent turnover among native-speaker teachers, and gaps between marketed extras and what gets delivered in a given year. A sensible option for families prioritising Cambridge qualifications at a lower fee than Haileybury, with a willingness to push for promised services.

Year level	Age	Fee
Kindergarten	3	KZT 5,170,000
Grades 1-5	6	KZT 5,390,000
Grades 6-8	11	KZT 5,720,000
Grades 9-10	14	KZT 6,270,000
Grades 11-12 (A-Levels / AP)	16	KZT 6,820,000

Year level

Age

Fee

Kindergarten

KZT 5,170,000

Grades 1-5

KZT 5,390,000

Grades 6-8

KZT 5,720,000

Grades 9-10

KZT 6,270,000

Grades 11-12 (A-Levels / AP)

KZT 6,820,000

Item	Age	Fee
Entry Fee (Grades 1-7)		KZT 300,000

Item

Age

Fee

Entry Fee (Grades 1-7)

KZT 300,000

A long-established Almaty private school in Bostandyk with Russian, Kazakh and Cambridge English departments under one roof. The Cambridge stream runs IGCSE and A Levels at fees that sit well below Haileybury. Parents describe a confident maths and sciences spine, a serious sports and language offer, and a clean, spacious campus with mountain views. The friction sits in the everyday: an administration that listens politely and then carries on, growing class sizes, native English staff that turn over, and a steady drip of small extra charges on top of tuition.

Considerations

Administration and parent voice. A recurring complaint is that the administration acknowledges concerns and then continues as it was. Decisions about fees, services and discipline feel top-down to parents who try to push back.
Class size and individual attention. Parents talk about growing class sizes and weaker individual attention for children who fall behind, with some describing the day-to-day experience as closer to a state school than the price tag suggests.
Native English staff turnover. Native speakers in the Cambridge stream are reported to change often, which interrupts continuity for families paying for the English-medium track.
Extras on top of tuition. Add-on charges for textbooks, classroom kit and elaborate end-of-year events come up repeatedly. Some families also flagged that activities promised inside the fee, including swimming and pottery, did not run for stretches without fee recalculation.
Traffic and parking. Bostandyk traffic around drop-off and pick-up is heavy and on-site parking is tight. A practical friction for families commuting daily.

Maths and sciences spine. The school sells itself as a physics-and-maths school and the academic reputation in those subjects holds up. Olympiad culture and a strong push toward international university destinations come through in parent comments.

Cambridge stream and language departments. Three streams operate side by side: Russian, Kazakh, and Cambridge English. The Cambridge department offers IGCSE and A Levels and is consistently picked out as one of the better Cambridge options in Almaty.

Facilities and campus. Newer building in Bostandyk, wide corridors, swimming pool, gym and sports complex, fresh mountain air on the playground. The physical plant is one of the most-praised parts of the experience.

Teaching staff. Long-serving local teachers come up as attentive, warm and well prepared. Parents single out individual teachers more often than they criticise the staff overall.