The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has emphasized education's importance as a fundamental human right and a necessary element of development. Education equips the emerging labor force with the literacy, numeracy, and problem-solving skills needed to participate in economic development.
Research has shown that developing countries that invested in family planning, healthcare, and education have experienced more rapid economic development than those that have not.
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region has made substantial investments in education over the past several decades, achieving near-universal access and closing gender gaps at most levels of schooling, yet these gains have not translated into comparable improvements in learning outcomes or economic opportunity.
History of education in the Middle East and North Africa Education in the Middle East and North Africa developed through local reform initiatives, missionary and humanitarian projects, and colonial education systems. After independence, governments increasingly used education for nation-building and economic development.
Colonial period Colonial authorities introduced compulsory modern education in the Arab region, but local access to formal education remained limited. Modern schooling, particularly European-language education, was restricted to a small number of students. Access to European-style education remained concentrated among those who could afford schooling or had other advantages, contributing to the development of an educated elite.
Western educational systems also spread through missionary and humanitarian projects and colonial administrative policy, with religious missions and private associations contributing to girls’ education, the spread of European languages, history and philosophy, and traditions of liberal education.
Post-colonial period
Historical perspective
In the Middle East and North Africa, during the post-colonial era, education spread as a result of the significant social changes and the rise of the indigenous élite as a ruling power. The willingness of national governments to build a strong nation made the acquisition of literacy a necessary skill for maximizing human potential. Most scholars and policy makers in the region have argued that education is the cornerstone of society's economic growth and expansion. They stress the importance of investing in education in order to promote sustained economic development, although despite significant expansion of educational reach and services, unemployment remains highThe Brookings Institution, Middle East Youth Initiative, "Inclusion: Meeting the 100 Million Youth Challenge, 2007".
In the post-colonial period, the dominant pattern has been the governments’ control of education. 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 expansion of primary, secondary and tertiary education has paralleled the rapid population growth since the 1960s. Between 1965 and 1990, the percentage of students enrolled in primary education increased from 61% to 98%.
Despite the introduction of higher education colonialism, the pace of enrollment at the university level increased significantly immediately following independence. In 1939, there were no more than nine regional universities, and by 1960, twenty. States with the highest numbers of enrolled students included Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq.
In the conservative regimes of Saudi Arabia and Yemen, European-style education was slow to emerge. Regimes were careful to expose the students to doctrines that might contradict with the Islamic culture, although Kuwait served as an exception. 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. 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.Saudi King Tries to Grow Modern Ideas in Desert, The New York Times, 2007-10-26
Post-independence challenges
Problems in expanding access to education were common to all MENA countries in the post-independence years. Affordable education did not necessarily reduce the number of uneducated children as a result of the population boom. Similarly, the educational system proved to be inadequate as classrooms, led by overworked and often underqualified teachers, were crowded with children. Students who moved through the strictly exam-based system were, and often continue to be, ill-equipped with the skills necessary for university-level education and employment.
Other problems emerged as the state attempted to unify multiple systems under the state: European-style and Islamic, public and private, instruction in Arabic and others in a foreign language, usually French or English. As a result, while some Islamic schools were closed, others became part of larger universities. As an example, the Zaytuna, a traditional Islamic school in Tunis, was incorporated to the school of Shari'a of the University of Tunis.
Another pattern seen under post-colonial government control of education was the Arabization of educational institutions. Schools that during colonial rule taught through the medium of a foreign language, began to teach in Arabic. As a consequence, students' opportunities to master a foreign language decreased in countries such as Syria, where introduction to a European second language occurred only in the secondary schools, not during primary education.
Students who wanted to pursue their studies abroad had to rely on family wealth or government scholarships. Those who were not able to master a foreign language faced serious obstacles. However, as the best-quality education could only be obtained in private schools, a wealthy educated élite remained. The intelligentsia class continued to master foreign languages and to enjoy employment advantages. By contrast, the larger part of society had to rely on the government's educational facilities and dwindling opportunities in public sector positions.
Conflict and education in the Middle East
A Strategic Foresight Group report on the cost of conflict in the Middle East found that the average monthly salary of school teachers in Iraq declined sharply after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and that almost 30–40% of students stayed home from school or university out of fear. Militants also deliberately targeted educational establishments following the war, killing an estimated 240 to 380 Iraqi academics and nearly 500 students between 2003 and 2008.
In the Lebanon 2006 war, approximately 15% of the country's public schools were damaged or destroyed, with similar losses among private schools, contributing to an estimated $87 million in direct and indirect impact on the education sector.
During the Second Intifada, more than 226,000 Palestinian children and over 9,300 teachers were unable to reach their classrooms due to curfews or closures. At least 580 schools had been closed as of November 2002.
Literacy rates
As a result of government investment in education, the average of educational attainment of the labor force increased. 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. Despite the improvement of literacy levels in the region, there was a discrepancy between the countries with a significant urban population, in which literacy rates had marked a steady increase and the predominantly rural countries where the percentage of illiteracy was remarkably high.
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. In Egypt, guaranteeing education for those aged below 15 is an enormous challenge as more than third of its population is between 6 and 14 with a concentration in rural areas.Zibani, N. Le travail des enfants en Egypte et ses rapports avec la scolarisation: esquisse d'évolution . Egypte/Monde Arabe. Cairo: Cedej, 1994. In the mountainous areas of Yemen, despite substantial efforts to build new schools or repair existing ones, classes may meet outdoors.UNICEF (2000). State of World's Children 2000. New York:UNICEF.
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. According to the World Bank report in 1999, in the rural areas of Morocco, only one woman out of ten can read and write. The United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization reported that over seventy-five million women and forty-five million men across the Middle East and North Africa region were illiterate.United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Institute for Statistics, Financing Education-Investments and Returns, Analysis of the World Education Indicators, 2002.
The quality of education is a crucial issue in economic development. In order to evaluate the quality of education, it is important to understand and evaluate its impacts. Such a process can be conducted through comparative studies both within the MENA region and internationally. 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. Both Jordan, which participated in the 1991 International Assessment of Educational Progress, and Iran, which did so in the 1995 Third International Mathematics and Sciences Study, showed a very low level in math and science , but with the greatest increase from 1995 to 2011.
More importantly, educational systems in MENA do not strongly rely on the inculcation of cognitive problem-solving skills. They are rather encouraged to memorize answers to a limited number of problems in order to pass one exam after another. 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.The Middle East Youth Initiative, "Inclusion: Meeting the 100 Million Youth Challenge, 2007" The costs of youth exclusion, including youth unemployment, have been estimated to reach as high as US$53 billion in Egypt (17% of GDP) and US$1.5 billion in Jordan (7% of GDP).The Middle East Youth Initiative, ""
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. In many MENA primary schools, students have access to a single textbook in every subject each year. This implies that the book itself is the only source of information. 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.