The article, proceeding from the social and cultural realities of modern Kazakhstan as a multinational
state, actualizes the problem of national education of the students, which is aimed at the development of the
national consciousness of a person. The author presents the new model of national education developed by a
number of scientists from the Abai Kazakh National Pedagogical University. The components of this model
are treated in the context of its three most important elements: ethnic, civil, and nationwide. The significance
and content of each component, as well as the main methodological provisions, on which the authors rested
in the course of its development, are substantiated. A feature of this model is that it involves the purposeful
work on the development of the national consciousness of the students from their ethnic socialization and
identification within the civil, and from it to the nationwide one focused on the formation of an intellectual
and competitive nation