Arab world failing children

LITERACY LEVELS: Children are receiving a poor quality of education in the Arab world, the World Bank said. (Getty Images)

Literacy levels in the Arab world are falling behind those of other developing regions due to the poor quality of education, the World Bank said on Monday.

In a report on educational reform in the Middle East and North Africa (Mena), the World Bank also said the relationship between education and economic growth remained weak, despite improvements in countries' education systems.

“The divide between education and employment has not been bridged, and the quality of education continues to be disappointing…there continues to be an education gap with other regions,” the bank said.

"Countries in the region have made significant progress in reforming educational systems... yet these achievements remain below other countries at similar levels of economic development."

The inferior quality of the region’s education has resulted in reduced economic opportunities and lower financial growth than those of Asia and Latin America countries, the bank said.

The World Bank urged countries to accelerate reforms in order to tackle unemployment and spur economic growth.

According to the "Road not Travelled" report, per capita economic growth in the region over the past 20 years has been relatively low.

One reason is that the "quality of instruction in the region is too low for schooling to contribute to growth and productivity", the bank said.

Djibouti, Yemen, Iraq and Morocco were ranked the lowest in access, efficiency and quality of education, while Jordan, Kuwait and Lebanon were judged to provide the best level of education in the Arab world.

Egypt, Iran, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories were ranked as average by the World Bank.

It highlighted Yemen, Morocco, Algeria and Egypt as having particularly low literacy levels.

Despite a high average income per capita, Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia also provided lower quality education than most other Mena countries.

The report surveyed reform in elementary, secondary and university level education in Algeria, Djibouti, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, the West Bank and Gaza, and Yemen.

The UAE, Oman and Qatar were not included in the study.

The World Bank findings follow the release of a report in January by the Arab League Educational Cultural and Scientific Organisation that found 75% of the 100 million people in the Arab world are illiterate.

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READERS' COMMENTS

Low Literacy Levels
Posted by Glory, Sharjah, UAE on Wednesday 6 February 2008 at 08:29 UAE time

The reason for the low levels is the quality of a high percentage of the teachers employed in the region. When the minimum salary required by the Ministry of Education for a pedagogical instructor is 2500 Dhs per month, many facilities pay the bare minimum there is no incentive for teachers to pursue professional development, and a lot of the qualifications here belie the actual ability or knowledge on the supposed instructional medium.
For example there are many holders of Masters in English Literature who cannot speak English, let alone know the basic rules of English so how can they teach what they themselves cannot do? When students are taught by a rote and memorization methodology many cannot achieve the entrance requirements of 500 for TOEFL due to the instruction in HCT facilities being in English.This results in huge profit margins for private institutions giving instruction simply on this concept. The same external tuition applies for many subjects at university level and many students simply pay for assignments to be done by institutions rather than do the work themselves.
Many teachers themselves lack the incentive to try new methods and are not willing to create learning communities within the school environment to assist each other improve teaching methodologies - reasons being jealousy, fear of losing face, fear of losing their position if they reveal a lack of knowledge, or simply losing their job.
In defence of the government there are strategies in place in the UAE to overhaul the education system, but like all strategic plans they have to be implemented slowly. They are achieving changes.
In order for this to work their needs to be a concerted effort from all parties involved, students, parents, teachers and government to work together to achieve a common aim of raising the standards here in the Arab world which will result in students being able to pursue their education at home rather than abroad, and to become the entrepreneurs of tomorrow.

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