The large number of teachers and school leaders is driven by the significant proportion of small-class schools in the country and strict staffing norms. The large number of staff squeezes school budgets, creates rigidities and crowds out investments in other areas. About 93% of school expenditure in rural schools is devoted to staff compensation. This means that budgets are very tight and that principals have very limited room for manoeuvre to manage resources in a more efficient way or invest in school development activities. In particular, the large number of staff discourages improvements in their compensation which is considered low in Kazakhstan, although the complexity of the teacher salary structure hinders its analysis. The definition of class sizes is a recurrent trade-off that has a great impact on expenditure due to the labour-intensive nature of education: small class sizes require a large number of teachers whilst greater class sizes can free up resources to improve teaching quality.