Three major factors that affect the Kazakhstan climate are: the remoteness of it from the oceans, its size and its location between two totally different climatic regions, Middle Asia and Siberia – where the impacts of the air masses of the cold north and the hot south meet.
Following independence from the Soviet Union a major economic depression cut "public financing" for education in Kazakhstan, "which dropped from 6% of gross domestic product in 1991 to about 3% in 1994, before rising to 4% in 1999."
By tradition, Kazakhs are Sunni Muslims of the Hanafi school. The Kazakhs adopted Islam gradually, with complete conversion only in the early 19th century.