DUBAI, Feb 6 (Bernama) — A new World Bank report said Middle East and North African (MENA) countries need to revamp their education systems to meet the demands of an increasingly competitive world and realise the potential of their large and growing youth population.
The report, entitled “The Road Not Travelled: Education Reform in the Middle East and North Africa”, said that after 40 years of education investments that had closed the gender gap at the primary school level and resulted in nearly universal education, the region now faced new challenges posed by globalisation and the increasing importance of knowledge in the development process.
“Countries in the region are not enjoying the same returns on education investment at the higher education level as some fast-growing middle-income countries in Asia, such as Malaysia and the Republic of Korea,” said Michal (rpt Michal) Rutkowski, sector director for Human Development in the World Bank’s MENA region.
“What we see in the region is that those who graduate from universities cannot find jobs. The unemployment rate is very high among them. Therefore, the average return that you observe is also not high, and this is a serious problem,” Rutkowski said.
The report contended that today’s world of intense global competition and rapid technological change demanded problem-solving, communication and language skills not being emphasised in most schools of the region.
Since education is the main source of knowledge creation, the task is clear. The education systems must be changed to deliver new skills and expertise necessary to excel in a more competitive environment, it said.
It said that up till now, MENA countries were focusing on building schools, recruiting and training teachers, and enrolling ever greater numbers of boys and girls in primary school.
“But the region still lags behind East Asia and Latin America in literacy and in average years of schooling among people 15 and older. While most boys and girls enrol in primary school, many drop out in the 5th, 6th, and 7th grades, particularly girls, to work or because of societal pressures,” said Rutkowski.
In an editorial piece, Dubai-based Khaleej Times daily said the World Bank had made a timely note of less than impressive quality of education and literacy rates in much of the Arab world, citing urgent need for improvement to offset an imminent wave of rising unemployment.
“It makes good sense that turnaround economies like Malaysia, China and India first made serious efforts to expand and improve their education levels, thus providing for wider human resource bands on which to rebuild.
“The Arabian Gulf has that opportunity on a much larger scale to offset problems that will have much longer repercussions,” it said, pointing out that there were pockets in the Arabian Gulf that epitomised progress.
Spearheaded by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) itself, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states are firmly cementing their place as an unprecedented magnet for business and intellectual brain power, in addition to their newfound tourism pull, said the article.
“And time is perhaps ripe to take advantage of this invaluable mix of nationalities and ideas. These parts of the Arabian world are best poised to augment their education prerogatives by making larger, more targeted investments in the sector,” it added.
The GCC countries comprise Kuwait, UAE, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.