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Lebanon's Educational Reform Program
The prototype for all the alphabets of the world was an invention, in 1200 BC, by the Phoenicians, who are thought to have settled in Lebanon, giving the country a hand in promulgating literacy across the world. The country enjoys one of the highest literacy rates in the region at 85%, employing 36,000 teachers in the public sector alone and pouring a generous budget of LP 900 billion ($600 million) or 13% of its total budget on education, second only to defense. But the good news ends here.
Lebanon’s educational reform program
Tinkering all it can
The prototype for all the alphabets of the world was an invention, in 1200 BC, by the Phoenicians, who are thought to have settled in Lebanon, giving the country a hand in promulgating literacy across the world. The country enjoys one of the highest literacy rates in the region at 85%, employing 36,000 teachers in the public sector alone and pouring a generous budget of LP 900 billion ($600 million) or 13% of its total budget on education, second only to defense.
But the good news ends here.
Today, Lebanon is a shipper of minds with more than nine million Lebanese expatriates living mostly in France, the US, and Brazil – in a phenomenon accelerated by wars and years of political instability. Lebanon’s public education system took a direct hit and lost serious ground to Jordan, the UAE, Qatar, and Bahrain, countries which are taking great steps towards public school reforms. Nevertheless, three major educational developments are simultaneously taking place in the country attempting to restore Lebanon’s once proud claim as a center of educational excellence: The Educational Development Project (EDP), the School Connectivity (SC) plan and the Ministry of Education’s (MoE) efforts at streamlining its own performance.
Educational Development Project
Approved in 2002, the Educational Development Project is a five-year, $56 million World Bank loan to the Lebanese Government to make broad multi-faceted reforms across the public education sector. With an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) component in it, the EDP aims at introducing computer technology in both schools and the MoE. “Part of the loan was spent preparing the students and teachers to work with the new technology and seeing it is implemented in the classroom, through computers and an Internet connection,” said Khaled Qabbani, then Lebanon’s Minister of Education. He added that 95% of secondary schools (about 350) and 60% of primary and intermediate schools (about 900) are already equipped with computers. “We have also been able to computerize our official exams in schools and then computerize the administration of our exam procedures as well as introduce the exam ‘bank’ into the government official national exams,” Qabbani said. The 2006 July War devastated many schools in the South, the suburbs, the Beqaa and other areas. But despite the setback, Qabbani said that schools were being rebuilt and furnished with computers.
The EDP also aims at buoying up the level of the public sector education through teacher and administrative staff training. “More than 150 school principals and directors have received training on administrative IT skills using what is known as the Education Management Information Systems (EMIS),” Qabbani said. The program would automate the administrative tasks of the MoE using an educational Decision Support System for policy making and research as well as link/integrate MoE information-based systems.
The project, which started in 2002, did not proceed without major hiccups that eventually derailed its implementation. “Upon my appointment at the MoE, the EDP was two-thirds under way in terms of implementation period, but nowhere near where it needed to be on the ground. It took a monumental effort to breathe life into it and get it back on track,” said the former minister. According to Qabbani, World Bank officials took notice of that effort prompting them to grant the project an additional year to be completed.
School Connectivity Plan
The EDP is laying the foundation for a more ambitious effort called the School Connectivity Plan. “We are working on creating one network to connect the central administration at the ministry with schools in all regions of Lebanon and another to connect schools to each other. This requires a lot of effort and funding,” Qabbani said. The SC plan is an effort outside of the World Bank loan agreement and is estimated at $50 million which the MoE is attempting to raise in collaboration with international IT companies. “We have exchanged ideas with companies like Cisco, Intel, and others who have expressed interest in this important project, which we expect to complete within 2-3 years,” Qabbani had predicted. Indeed, such collaboration between the MoE and multinationals has already been evident. US firm 3Com has offered networking equipment worth $500,000 to the MoE’s Datacenter which will be used to unify the communications system in its new headquarters near UNESO Palace, helping various schools to communicate. “Lebanon as a country is quite devastated after the war. It has always been known as a leader in education in the Middle East but now it’s not getting the same status any more,” Hamed Diab, General Manager of 3Com Middle East, commented. “Connectivity is important to help the Ministry speed up the transfer of information and get the quality of service it is looking for.”
Cisco is also working closely with the MoE on the SC plan, engaging its technical capability to help design the appropriate solutions for the short and long term objectives. “We support education,” said Fadi Moubarak, Cisco’s General Manager for the Levant and Iraq. Cisco’s engagement comes from the company’s vision that education plays a major role in transforming countries and making them more competitive within the global economy, indirectly giving the company more maneuvering room for its business and a better pool of talent to recruit from. “On the connected schools project in Lebanon, we are engaging our technical capability to help design the appropriate solutions from multiple short- and long-term options,” Moubarak said. Cisco is aligning those options with the objectives of the ministry and is even helping streamline the necessary funds for the SC project. “We work with multiple NGOS in the world and region to secure the funds needed to launch and install the network, but what’s more important is the operation, support and maintenance of these networks, without which the network would be useless within 6 months,” Moubarak indicated.
When building such a network, the MoE will technically and practically become a service provider. With 1,200 schools and more than 650,000 public school students, operational support will become mandatory. Currently, Cisco is providing the design of the network free of charge and may contribute part of the equipment. But the company will not implement the national network for free. The cost of broadband connectivity of schools is dependent on how many schools the MoE plans to connect and at what speed. “$50 million is a logical figure if the government loads up on its options for broadband connectivity,” Moubarak opined.
According to Qabbani, the SC project will use a combination of wireless networks and fiber optics, beginning with a pilot that will engage 100 locations in various parts of the country. “The studies are underway. We are trying to secure the funds but, because of the high cost involved, more than one agreement needs to be drafted with several companies like Cisco, Microsoft, and others,” Qabbani said. Qabbani visited Jordan to familiarize himself with the Jordan Education Initiative (JEI- See Middle East Educator cover issue 5), where a country-wide project involving more than 32 international companies is underway to introduce technology in the classroom and connect the schools to the country’s MoE.
However, Moubarak believes that “What is happening in Jordan is not happening here for a simple reason: There is something called JEI, but there isn’t something called LEI.” He believes that for the SC project to create a real impact and be taken seriously “a country needs plans, objectives and a clear time frame so as private companies can measure the impact of their involvement. In Lebanon it’s a work in progress and it is just now starting to look like a public private partnership.” Qabbani doesn’t deny the fact that Lebanon’s educational reform lacks the finances to match or upstage regional efforts. “Despite Lebanon’s once leading regional position in education, more than 30 years of war and instability have set us back. Today, we are neither Qatar nor the UAE and we don’t have the finances, but we do have human resources to bridge the gap in two to three years’ time,” Qabbani claimed.
Streamlining the MoE Administration
The third component of the Lebanese educational reform involves restructuring the MoE administration. “Up until I arrived, the ministry administration was not able to run a proper public education system and follow the trend and advances in education,” Qabbani said. The MoE’s role is to come up with a strategy and policy for education, but Qabbani blames the ministry’s failures on limitations of staff, expertise, lack of laws and regulations, structure and finances. “For example, the laws that govern the structure of the ministry go back to 1959 and we have ministry employees that have been here since then. The ministry additionally has no administration for planning, ICT or school maintenance,” Qabbani clarified. So, the work began on “rebuilding the MoE from scratch” with emphasis put on improving the level of teaching, curriculum standards, and work of educational committees. “I have completed an administrative streamlining of the MoE as well as a plan to implement new laws related to teaching strategies and curriculum standards which have all been submitted for cabinet approval,” Qabbani said, adding “now we just have to wait for the political situation in Lebanon to settle down so as to receive their approval and proceed with implementation.”
Concurrently, Qabbani’s work was to make the education sector more competitive with ongoing work on the curriculum, teacher training and collaboration with NGOs on providing services such as psychological and career counseling. Qabbani also assigned the MoE’s Center for Educational Research and Development (CERD) to reevaluate the curriculum and books for all stages of school education. “In 1997, a new curriculum was developed and teachers were trained on it. But we found holes both in the curriculum and in the training method, and CERD has in the last two years reassessed the kg and primary grades and is now moving to other ones,” Qabbani said.
The minister had worked on several fronts to raise the quality of teaching, which has suffered in the last decade. Fatima Rashidi, head of pedagogy and teaching at the Hariri Foundation, has 15 years experience in both high school and college education. Rashidi’s reputation earned her an invitation from the MoE in 2000 to work on a study to devise a strategy for public education in Lebanon, which never saw the light. “There is a huge malfunction in public education. The level of education in public schools has gone down tremendously, especially at the elementary level,” Rashidi said, adding “the instruction methods there are still teacher-centered and the curricula and books promote more rote learning than critical thinking.” Qabbani did not deny that fact. “We are proud of our secondary educators who also teach in private schools, but we have a problem with teachers in primary and middle grades,” Qabbani said. Securing loans and help from the European Union and the French Embassy in Lebanon, the MoE has so far trained 16,000 primary and middle grade teachers who were hired despite lacking the qualifications or experience to teach. “I have stopped hiring at these grades, but anyone wishing to teach would today need a teaching diploma,” Qabbani said.
During his many visits to schools in the country, Qabbani met with administrators, private schools, education unions and mayors in an attempt to resolve issues, but his meetings with NGOs have helped secure help in much needed areas. “Since we don’t have the means to install certain services in every school, I seek the assistance of the NGOs who have an interest in education like Ajyalna for health education, Iqraa’ which deals with reading and libraries, Injaz who council students for college, Al Sabil for drug, sex, and smoking counseling, and others,” Qabbani said.
Political interference in Lebanon’s vital sectors has traditionally sabotaged any effort towards reform. Education is perhaps one of the administrations that politicians interfere most with because it has a capacity to offer huge services. “I deal with this very transparently and decisively. If I receive applicants who are below our standards, I refuse them. Most politicians understand this. The best reform we can do is to separate the management from politics. This requires a big, big effort,” Qabbani surmised.
More information on Partnership for Lebanon
Launched in September 2006 following the ‘July War”, the Partnership for Lebanon is a philanthropic effort led by five US companies: Cisco, GHAFARI Inc., Intel Corporation, Microsoft, and Occidental Petroleum Corporation. “We are working on helping with the economic development of Lebanon by looking at various facets of what constitutes an economy and trying as much as possible to pull resources together,” said George Akiki, Program Director-Partnership for Lebanon/Corporate Affairs.
Closely connected to Lebanon’s school reform is the partnership’s ICT infrastructure and connectivity project. “We truly believe that the potential growth for the economy is directly related to IT connectivity. We are working with the Telecom Regulatory Authority (TRA) and the office of the Prime Minister to develop a broadband strategy,” Akiki said. The system’s architecture consists of both fiber optic and wireless networks. Wireless is an access technology that requires providers. But for all providers to aggregate and connect to the outside world, they need bigger pipes with fiber optics. “For technologies to compete out there, you need speed, core networks, policies and regulations to provide for healthy competition to the end user,” Akiki said. Data pipes need better equipment to process information. “As part of the government’s School Connectivity Project, we donated $1-$2 million worth of routers,” Akiki said.
The Partnership also has a K-12 initiative called “School in a Box”. “We are looking at what a school needs to get wired. The partnership has not committed to wiring 1,700 public schools, but we are trying to agree on a model and fund it,” Akiki said, adding that Cisco alone estimates spending $10-$15 million towards their commitment in the Partnership for Lebanon.
More Information on Intel’s PC initiative
Intel, the world’s number one chipmaker, has launched “The Intel Classmate Initiative” in one school in the Burj al-Barajneh area, equipping it with 25 Classmates as part of the planning process for the broadband deployment of Classmate PC (CMPC) in 1:1 teaching and learning environments across Lebanon. Intel-powered CMPCs are mobile personal learning devices for primary students (ages 5-14) which engage children with a rugged, lightweight and compact design. “Technology is changing the way students think, allowing them to learn anytime, anywhere. Using IT at its core, children’s learning environment is going from knowledge acquisition to knowledge creation,” said Robert Fogel, Director of World Wide Grid Strategy and Business Development for Intel Corp. He added that such learning environments are premised on having affordable technology, a digital curriculum, connectivity, and improved learning methods.