Education in the Middle East and North Africa
It is the acquired body of knowledge that equips the emerging labor force with the necessary skills to ensure its active participation in economic development.
A professional working force enhances the quality of a nation's economic productivity and guarantees its suitability for global market competitiveness.
[3] The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region comprises the countries of Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Malta, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), West Bank and Gaza, Israel and Yemen.
Economic development strategies also vary between the oil-producing states such as Kuwait and United Arab Emirates and the non-oil producing countries such as Tunisia and Jordan.
Colonial education in many ways was designed to shape local intellectual development and to limit their ability of local actors in challenging the colonizers’ political control, while enhancing the[clarification needed] of Western culture, but it resulted from the colonizer's willingness to advance a dominant and superior western culture while annexing further territories in the MENA region and imposing restrictions on nationals.
[4] Colonies such as Tunisia and Egypt invested in educational missions that sent elite students to Europe where they could study technologies and modes of life and ultimately transfer their acquired knowledge to their countries of origin.
[5] In the Middle East and North Africa, during the post-colonial era, education spread as result of the significant social changes and the rise of indigenous élite as a ruling power.
[4] Free education was promoted by many leaders, including Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, as a critical aspect of nation-building, and promised that each graduate would find a position in the public sector.
The Persian Gulf states have since introduced far-reaching educational reforms, with the awareness that only by investing in their own human capital will they see economic development continue beyond the oil boom years.
[11] Recently, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has been featured in the international press for his efforts to establish multiple centers of learning, with a mixed-gender Western model.
By contrast, the larger part of society had to rely on the government's educational facilities and dwindling opportunities in public sector positions.
Throughout the region, while the percentage of girls in primary schools was as important as that of boys, female access to higher education was steadily rising.
Correspondingly, due to their improved level of literacy, educated women could work as lawyers, doctors, and employees in social services.
In countries such as Tunisia and Iraq where the state governments were willing to rapidly modernize their societies, women A report by Strategic Foresight Group has mentioned the academic cost of conflict in the Middle East.
Though mostly regarded as a symbol of national achievement rather than a financial goal, high literacy rates had more than doubled in the countries of the Middle East and North Africa in the period spanning from 1960 to 1995.
[2] Due to the rising number of young students, especially in rural areas, countries such as Yemen, Egypt and Morocco face a serious obstacle towards achieving universal basic education.
[16] Further attempts at raising literacy rates are being processed in the MENA region with a particular emphasis on educating women in rural areas where the level of illiteracy in general is high especially among females.
However, as only Iran and Jordan have participated in recent international assessment studies, the available data on the quality of education in the MENA region is very low.
As a result, they are rewarded for being passive rather than active learners, and in the end graduate into a job-market that values creativity and problem-solving, partially explaining the staggering 25% youth unemployment rate in the Middle East, the highest of any region worldwide.
[20] Some indicators, such as the available sources of data on individual students or the patterns of expenditure in primary schools, can be helpful in determining the quality of education in MENA.
Correspondingly, the development of cognitive skills tends to be slow and depends on the student's personal efforts to assimilate new information, hence progress.
In addition, such a process can even be slower because of the absence of other reading materials and video programs that may provide further illustrations and make the studied topic clear and understandable.
"[27] One way to explain such phenomenon could be to argue that educational management have not witnessed substantial changes and reforms since the post-independence period.
The central government used to anticipate the required skills for the future employees before deciding and planning the different educational specializations.
Manpower forecasts had to predict the number of employees required in every field prior to students' graduation and completion of secondary or higher education.
The rise of girls participation in primary schools aimed at wiping the widespread claims that Islamic rules restricted female access to education.
Indeed, it is predicted that by the year 2010, Arab countries can reach 70 per cent of literacy rate as result of the sustained improvement of education especially with regards to women.
Consequently, the coordination between curricular objectives, mechanisms used by teachers, and appropriate selection of examinations can be efficient in conveying a functional and coherent educational system.
Nevertheless, in order to be able to adapt to the global open market, governments in the region need to encourage the use of statistics and different data analysis tools that aim at uncovering the status of education for both local responsible authorities and international bodies.
Conversely, as a result of the shortage of information about these evaluative data, it is very difficult to determine the reasons for the failure of educational systems in MENA.
