Retired teachers in Kyrgyzstan will not be dismissed. On social media there were rumors that older teachers would be sent into mass retirement after the president suggested they give up their jobs to younger people. The Ministry of Education officially denied everything. There is no age discrimination. In schools in the country, 15,000 experienced teachers are currently working, and they have remained. Instead of dismissals, they will be offered to mentor younger teachers or switch to a flexible schedule.
Mentoring is exactly what young teachers need to keep them in school. 15 thousand teachers at retirement age are not a burden, but a reserve of personnel that it is doubtful that a young specialist in the first years of work at the school will not be able to replace by himself.
If you simply fire experienced teachers, the school will lose not only hours, but also methodology, discipline and the ability to work with parents. Mentoring makes it possible to maintain these abilities within the system and at the same time give young teachers the support they often lack in the first two or three years. Flexible scheduling is the other smart tool. It gives the possibility of gradual retirement without a sharp break with the profession.
The question is how it will work in practice. Mentoring requires time and payment, and is flexible to accommodate schedules and workloads. If these mechanisms remain only on paper, but in reality amount to "agree on it yourself", the effect will be zero. But the very wording of the question is not to fire, but to use experience - this is a step in the right direction for a system that is simultaneously experiencing a shortage of personnel and needs to be updated.