Education in Syria - Challenges

Challenges

Syria has shown great progress in providing access to basic education and to some extent, post basic education to the growing population. Still Syria has a long way to go to bring about a comprehensive change in the education system.

Access to pre primary level education is low in Syria when compared to other lower-middle income countries. The enrollment at the pre-primary level is 10 percent in Syria whereas it is 15.7 percent in the MENA region in 2007. Government of Syria has to make substantial investments in infrastructure to improve access to preprimary education. The government needs to prioritize expansion of schools especially in underserved areas with vulnerable populations. According to research findings, children of disadvantaged backgrounds are the ones that benefit the most from early childhood programs by developing basic skills necessary for employment thereby moving them out of abject poverty. Currently, most of the Early Childhood Care and Education services in Syria are delivered through private kindergartens and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) based in urban areas.

Despite increasing quantity of human capital through increasing access to education at all levels, the improvement of quality of the education and training system and consequently the quality of human capital is another challenge that Government of Syria needs to address. Weak growth in labor productivity over the past two decades has been associated with low quality and relevance of education in Syria. The results of International test scores TIMSS show that 44 percent of students who appeared in this international exam performed below the lowest international benchmark. Therefore there is a greater need to improve the quality of overall education system. This also involves the need to incorporate the use of communication and technology to better prepare students to the demands of the globalised world. Currently, Syria’s computer and internet usage is very low compared to a number of neighboring countries and is much lower than the average for lower middle income countries.

Syria also faces high repetition and dropout rates. Repetition rate at primary level has been very high, almost 12 percent in 2006 and is steadily rising since 2003.At the secondary level, repetition rate has reached almost 20 percent. According to the latest data in 2004/05 the average repetition rate was 6 percent for grade 1-6, 13.3 percent for grades 7-9, and 7.3 percent for grades 10-12.Drop-out rates stood at 2.2 percent for grades 1-6, 8 percent for grades 7-9,and 7.3 percent for grades 10-12.Along with high repetition and dropout rates, a fairly low student –teacher ratio also signals internal inefficiency in the education system. The ratio in Syria is low due to the relatively high recruitment of teachers in comparison to the growth of students. The number of teachers grew at an annual rate of 7 percent between 2000 and 2006, which is almost twice the growth rate for students, which resulted in STR of 19:1 in basic education and 9:1 in secondary education. To increase the internal efficiency, the government should focus on hiring trained and competent teachers, reform the curriculum and develop testing, evaluation and measurement.

Then the increasing unemployment rate, especially among youth, implies poor education quality along with lack of infrastructure to absorb the rising population. The youth unemployment rate in Syria stood at 19 percent in 2003. The current system is unable to provide with the skills and competencies demanded in the labor market. Therefore, there is a need to connect education institutions, especially higher education and vocational institutes, to the labor market and to align the curricula with skills that could increase employability of the graduates. Apart from improving the curriculum the government needs to make major infrastructure adjustments to absorb the rising population of the country into the already burdened education system. In 2007, the education system in Syria catered for about 8 million students. Given the current growth rate of 4.3 percent per annum of school age population, it is projected that by 2015, the education system in Syria will need to cater for an additional 1 million students in basic and secondary education.