Inside Story Arab World: Education 10 FEB 08 Pt.2

welcome back well the world bank report paints bleak picture of the arab education sector yet it's not the first one to show the region's failings and follows series of other damning reports the 2005 united nations arab human development report called for the empowerment of arab women it criticized discrimination against women citing the high rates of illiteracy amongst them again it called for lifting their participation rate in economics and politics the 2004 report makes similar plea that report called for widespread reforms the abolition of states of emergency guarantees for the rights of minorities and the guarantees of the independence of judges joining us again our guest in washington d.c mr muradezin he is the world bank's education sector manager in cairo mustafa kamela said his professor at cal university also joining us from cairo in this part of the program is lassen haddad he is professor of strategic studies at muhammad the fifth university thank you very much indie gentlemen for joining us morocco has been cited as one case which which is lagging far behind in terms of education you teach us in morocco what do you think should be the next step to fix the problem of the education deficit in morocco well think the next problem should be really like to to taking to look into the question of quality and education and then because we have spent like whole decade talking about quantity and also achieving general kind of education think the quantitatively we have been successful but think that's at the detriment of quality of education of real good school that that really that graduates students that are employable think the second thing that we need to do is create system whereby people can be or indicators and educational respon people who are responsible for education should be accountable for the results it should be accountable to parents to the community and also which means that we have to involve all the parties including into the education process mr kamil is saying mr lesson haddad was talking about reviewing the very quality issue but in this case do we have to change all the procedures the curriculum in the arab world the way people have been told the same lessons for the last 50 years yeah think there is no general formula think the reform proposal has to be tailored to the specific problems of each country but definitely you know in some countries there has been you know much improvement in terms of the curriculum in other countries you know teaching methods should be improved but think there is you know an agenda for reform and each country should focus on that item on the agenda which is relevant to its own problems would like to say that you know in many countries definitely there is need for improving the curriculum would like to see more philosophy taught in schools would like also to see more mathematics in schools definitely you know the teaching methods should change from you know just you know getting one by hand what they are learning to you know critical thinking so now we have to take into account the quality aspect and at the same time the changing of you have as you have mentioned right now the of the teaching methods mr moradizin you've been saying in the report that education is detrimental to the human development how can we bridge the gap between the two deficit in education and the deficit in human development in the arab world sorry could you repeat the question the report stresses the the need to bridge the gap between education and human development how can we do that think the same the same as gentleman said apply to it first in order to improve the state of human development we need better quality of education we need to have labor force that is capable of critical thinking problem solving skills and this is through the education system but at the same time the human development is problem of society as whole and if we take the economic aspect we need to be able to use more educated labor force which is not happening now we see the level of unemployment becoming very high for people who have the skills so what the report says is at the same time as working on the education system we need to reform labor markets and migration policies okay this is very important point which is made by the report also mr lassen there is now so would like to mention that would like to mention to your viewers that the report is available on the world bank external site which is worldbank.org and can be downloaded okay we have an executive summary for the report in arabic also there is draft on the reform of education which will be presented to the arab summit in damascus next month which suggests that the arab world should spend one percent of the gdp on education or research is this something that could improve education in the arab world do you agree with that mean to certain extent but the arabs are already spending lot of money mean like some some countries is like five some countries is six of gdp and morocco reaches something like 25 percent of its budget in education think there is only so much you can spend when there is problem of efficiency when there is problem of accountability when there is problem of motivation of teachers think there are lot of mean when when you just spend think you are just working from the engineering point of view as the report says which is what you put into the education in terms of buildings and all of that think that's very important in morocco if we do that we can have like about 100 000 girls in the rural areas reach the middle school and the secondary school but you need to work with with with the people who are in the education and think the teachers we have not done lot of work we have raised their salaries but we have not mean works on the motivation mean there are lot of teachers who live like in very bad conditions some of them don't go to classes some of them teach like multi-level kinds of classes we have to improve all these aspects we have others saying that how can we and this my question is to mr kamil said how can we improve education in the arab world when we are suffering at the same time from corruption bad governance lack of transparency how can we put all those things into perspective which comes first yeah think reform of the education system is part of should be part of reform of the political system itself think this is you know something which is amazing about the report the report calls for public accountability in education but how can we promote public accountability for education at the same time there is no public accountability for the rulers themselves you know the political systems of arab countries think lack accountability for the rulers the rulers you know commit mistakes you know engage in blunders and they remain in their positions for decades so think this is you know contradiction in the recommendations which come out of there okay would like to say also that yeah can make this point the report would like to say that it is quite artificial in calling for improvement in the education system and saying nothing about you know the kind of jobs that are created in the labor market you know the economic growth in arab countries does not produce sufficient jobs for highly skilled people so we you know could produce highly skilled people engineers and medical doctors okay but they don't do those jobs not because the country lacks but because there are too many engineers and medical doctors think it is the report highlights roadmap for success or the three components of reform number one is the right use of technology mr murad is in how can we do that or implement that in countries where people are very poor and the budget is not that enough to provide people with the with technology in schools and university campuses don't think that technology plays an important role in learning the type of skills that are needed in the region and that are needed for the knowledge economy they can help probably but the problem is not there and as you said yourself countries that have invested heavily in technology for example the gulf country did not achieve better results in international test what is important is culture of assessment is measuring the impact of the policies that are put in place and holding the education system and the stakeholder accountable and would like to come back to the issue of governance it's very important and totally agree with professor haddad however don't think that we can say that in order to improve governance in the education system we need to improve governance in political governance for example that's not what we found out okay you can have better results by improving the kind of relationship that exists between the state which is funding education and the institution there's another component education there's another component for reform mentioned by the report which is the enhanced performance compensation mr lassen haddad as teacher yourself do you think that given the schools public schools universities the right to hire and fire teachers based on their performance is something that could be applied in places like morocco which is lagging far behind in terms of education mean don't think accountability means that you can you just mean about firing and hiring people it is about that but it is also about schools having certain kinds of objectives and reporting on yearly basis about how much they achieve what were some of their problems what how could like the local community and the government help is system where they have reporting cards in which they say this is what we achieved and this is why we did not achieve this this is why there was so much school dropout or why students did not do well in tests and all of that and of course within that there comes some sort of evaluation of teachers we have always had like that kind of evaluation we dropped it like about 10 or 15 years before but before there was an inspection of teachers and there was promotional teachers on the basis of what my last question think my last question to mr kamil is saying we are nation that doesn't really doesn't translate suffer from archaic forms of governance what's wrong with the arabs yeah think what is wrong with the arabs is their political systems think you know there are many talented skilled people you know in all arab countries but think you know think to some extent you know arab political systems do not really match the level of knowledge of their own population despite you know everything said in the report you know arab countries do possess you know large number of highly skilled people who are quite knowledgeable think the level of of knowledge of their societies has improved but think the political systems somehow don't match this level of higher expectation on the part of our people so think you know the kind of success in the same time that took place in countries of east asia resulted from changes in the report by the end of the day it doesn't end on pessimistic note it still opens the window for hope saying that there's still new chapter for hope in the arab world mr haddad in cairo mr kamil said also in cairo and mr murad is in washington dc thank you very much indeed for your insight thank you so much for joining us here on this edition of inside story we will come your comments and suggestions please email them to us at insidestory aljazeera.net goodbye for now you