Education in The Middle East and North Africa - Literacy Rates

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. In the mountainous areas of Yemen, despite substantial efforts to build new schools or repair existing ones, classes may meet outdoors.

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.

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 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.

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 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).

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.

From a different perspective, countries in the Persian Gulf states spent four times more on students in higher education than on students in basic school. Tunisia, Jordan, and Morocco spent correspondingly about 8, 14, and 15 times more on a student in university than on a student in compulsory education. Though it might be argued that this is due to the costs of higher education, governments that spend more than ten times per student in higher education tend to ignore the importance of compulsory education's importance in personal and intellectual development.

In the Arab world, the low quality of the educational system is not due to the lack of funding but results from the inadequate management of the available monetary resources directed at improving education in the region. The Education Performance Index(EPI) that measures the quality of education in the developing countries conveyed a discrepancy between the different countries in the region. They varied in the ways of exploiting the advantages of economic potential for the benefit of their people. Countries such as Tunisia succeeded in investing more than six per cent of its GNP in free public education. As a consequence, more than 1.4 million students could enjoy a free and compulsory education in 1991. In other countries such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, despite the available financial resources, basic education was not improved. This can be interpreted as being the result of the low net enrollment rate. Moreover, while the gender gap in compulsory education in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait is not very high, Qatar suffers a gender gap of 20 per cent in students enrollment in basic education.