Education crisis looming over Arab world: Report

A regional education report has set alarm bells ringing for Arab states. The report says if these countries do not raise the level of investment in the education sector now, they would face social and political crisis in future. 

Resources are not an impediment for these Gulf countries to invest generously in education of their young. In fact, they are overflowing with abundance, thanks to the oil money. Yet the education system in the region remained a picture of neglect. 

Security, rather than education, enjoys top priority in these countries. Since almost all these countries are under totalitarian regimes, the inherent fear of the rulers over the knowledge as a weapon in the hands of the subject is coming in the way of education. They are apprehensive of any educational reforms. 

Speaking at the launch of the Arab Knowledge Report 2009, Adel Abdellatif of the United Nations Development Programme said:

"The security sector is taking a lot of resources. If you put the same amount of money into education, you get a better society." 

 

This phenomenon is evident from fact that the economic prosperity does not reflect in the educational advancement of the Arab world. According to Abdullatif rulers’ apprehensions about the consequences of the educational reforms are at the root of this negligence towards education.

As per the UNDP data, while Saudi Arabia, rich with oil money in the region, had spent 6.8 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) in 2005 on education against a military spending of 8.2 percent, Oman invested a meager 3.6 percent of its GDP in education. Oman’s military spending for the corresponding period was a whopping 11.9 percent. 

Similar is the case of United Arab Emirates (UAE). Head of a a Dubai education foundation, Adel Rashed al-Shared, has this to say about the education scenario in the state: 

"You can see very clearly that public education is bad quality, private education is excellent quality. We have the money, the investment, we had a huge budget but education is not moving in the last ten years." 

 

With one third of the 60 million population being Illiterate, the Arab world faces a stumbling block to carry forward any educational reforms, according to the report.