Preparing schoolchildren for future professions in a digitalizing economy

This article is dedicated to preparing schoolchildren for the professions of the future within the digital economy of Kazakhstan and comparable jurisdictions. The topic's relevance is driven by the acceleration of automation and the growing demand for ICT competencies. Its novelty lies in integrating international policy guidelines and empirical data from Kazakhstan's school environment into a unified skills model. The paper describes employers' requirements for higher-order thinking and technological literacy, examines policy and administrative decisions on updating standards, developing personnel and infrastructure, and pays attention to extracurricular formats of ICT socialization. The objective is to identify a set of effective mechanisms for the early formation of digital and cross-curricular competencies. To achieve this, comparative analysis, analytical review, thematic coding, and a synthesis of practices were employed. The study examined regulatory documents, reports from international organizations, academic research, and case studies of clubs and Olympiads. The conclusion outlines a package of recommendations for updating programs, supporting teachers, and expanding access to IT practices. This material will be useful for educational policymakers, school administrators, methodologists and informatics teachers, and labor market researchers. A special emphasis is placed on early experience in programming, robotics, and project sprints as predictors of successful academic adaptation and the choice of IT fields, and on mechanisms for reducing the digital divide between urban and rural schools based on international comparison metrics.