Digitalization of vocational education as the main condition for training competitive specialists

The process of digital modernization in the global space has shown the need to introduce digitalization into the main development plan of public policy in our country as well. The rapid development of digital technologies contributes to professional education and today requires the implementation of a complex of works aimed at training competitive specialists who possess digital competencies. Currently, the country is undergoing a process of updating and developing the national education system in the context of global competition. In this case, to form a digital society in accordance with the best international practices, it will be obliged to continuously update the system of vocational education under new requirements. Since last year, due to the widespread of COVID–19 around the world, including in Kazakhstan, all levels of education have forcibly switched to a distance learning format. This situation has shown the presence of some difficulties and problems that still need to be solved regarding the process of digitalization of the education sector. One of the main conditions for increasing the national competitiveness of Kazakhstan in the global world is the digitalization of all levels of education and improving the quality of human capital. Therefore, it became necessary to analyze the Kazakhstani experience of digitalization of higher education, including the achieved successes and the existing difficulties. This article analyzes the progress of the implementation of state programs for the digitalization of the professional education process and the current state of digitalization of higher education in the country. Based on the analysis of scientific papers on this issue, data comparison and analysis of the results of the questionnaire method for students, conclusions are drawn regarding the digitalization of vocational education and recommendations are given for further improvement of the digitalization process.