Throwing The Baby with the Dirty Bath Water : The Ministry of Education
Along the spirit of the educational conference that we have watched lately: The” Wise Forum” in Qatar , established to seek World Educational Innovation and Excellence, I would like to dedicate this post to the appreciation of some of our wise Qatari intellectuals, who could have safeguarded the educational reform initiative in Qatar from slipping to uncertainty :
1- Dr. Abdulla Bin Jumah Al-Kubiasi, the first Qatari to preside Qatar University. Dr. Abdulla supported Qatari faculty and gave them the opportunity to lead and excel. He established the office of technical educational excellence that is reporting directly to the university’s president, supervised many educational reform initiatives (see the historical perspective of these initiatives in his latest published paper).
2- Mr. Mohammed Al-Khulaifi and Ali Al-Manai are of the few who chose the teaching profession over the lucrative public sector jobs , in an era where such a profession was stigmatized as a female profession.
3- Mr Lahdan Al- Muhandi, an advocate and outspoken writer who wrote on several occasions about the educational reform in Qatar.
4- Last but not least Aisha Bint Ali Bin Jaber Al-Thani, who spoke her mind on educational reform, where other educationalists chose to follow the crowd .
A sequence of articles published in the Qatari newspaper Al Watan during last May, on the philosophy behind the education policy in Qatar.[1] The articles threw light on the policy formulation and practices within the education sector from elementary to tertiary levels. Furiously and harshly pinpointed many hiccups that would hinder the creation of a Qatari citizen compatible with the a knowledge–based economy, the kind of citizen Qatar is aiming for, according to the vision designed by the Secretariat for Development Planning. These articles seemed to miss one important point by putting all the blame on one person, the minister of education who was caught in reporting to a double line of authority; the ministry of education reporting to the cabinet on one side, and the supreme council of education on the other. This editorial outcry is only the tip of the iceberg. Many parents and educationalists are outraged and crying their guts out on the same issue, but unfortunately only within their private surroundings, never in an open societal dialogue.
In this note I will bring up some of the concerns related to basic education, while the issue of high education deserves a separate note.
In the mid nineties a Grand Committee was established for educational reform in Qatar. Many of the committee members were middle ranking lecturers in Qatar University and few practitioners from the Ministry of Education. Quite a good number of committee members were from the field of linguistics for either Arabic or English. There was a preconception that decentralization and the English language are the keys to educational excellence in Qatar. I was called to participate in one of the subcommittees that dealt with the economic side of the matter, and I asked the head of the subcommittee in our first meeting on the methodology we would follow to study the economic dimension of educational reform. I was not called back again to any of those meetings. Some while later I then met the head of the subcommittee accidently and tried to understand the reasons for not inviting me again, to which he explained that he was told that I have young kids and the committee might have rigorous meeting hours, so he decided not to call me back for my own benefit!!! I could not stop an inner feeling at that moment that producing the educational reform report by the committee members was an end in itself and not a means towards finding the right approach to educational reform as supported by H.H. the Amir.
The Grand Committee produced a report on educational reform of around 400 pages that has been kept disclosed up to this day. In a seminar of Qatar University annex, a presentation was given on the subject matter. It was attended by the Minster of High Education at the time, and other Qatar University officials. We as faculty of Qatar University, and as parents, asked the minister for a wider debate and a broader discussion of the 400 paged report, where the community should be involved. We believed that a wider debate would be the only safeguard towards community involvement and positive societal reaction, and hence the correct move towards the final and optimal success of any reform, the checks and balances so to speak. The minster promised to release the report for a wider discussion, only to discover later on by a senior adviser of the minster that the minister told him after the meeting not to release the document to anybody. Many of the committee members were granted leading positions in the ministry of education and in Qatar University. Is it not a normal outcome? Those who were to know the ills of the education sector should necessarily know how to treat them. Yes but if committee members and researchers were under the wishful thinking of being paid off implicitly by leading the execution step of the reform then that might create a researcher ethical dilemma where the independency of the research methodology and outcomes are severely questioned.
A sequence of international consultancy firms arrived year after year to rectify and diagnose why the reform is not happening at the pace and the quality desired by the authorities? The researcher ethical dilemma repeated itself again when national counterparts working with international consultants had their eyes on leadership positions at the execution stages. This scenario happened with the Education strategy, Health strategy and the ICT strategy. Many decisions were made under time constraints with too little information or highly filtered information to the decision maker. The international consultants’ approach to such situations is “as long as our pay check is on the rise, give them what they want, what the heck?”.
The philosophy of the new educational strategy was never clear to stakeholders: parents, educationalists, intellectuals or the community at large. Marginalizing stakeholders is the right ingredient to kill any plan or strategy.
The “modern” education sector in Qatar was one of the luckiest social sectors in terms of funds allocation over the history of the Qatari state. Ever since the establishment of the ministry of Maaref (knowledge) and the first government school in 1955, the government was pouring money generously to the education sector. The education sector budget jumped from 6 million QAR in 1957 to 54 million QAR in 1962 to 176 million in 1975-76 to 19.3 billion QAR in 2011. Schools were built everywhere, even in the smallest village in the Qatari peninsula. Since those early days the education sector played a major social role. It created economic opportunities to villagers who were employed as bus drivers, it was the main mechanism for social upward mobility as many individuals were brought up in the social ladder for prestigious government jobs and other social and economic benefits, and it helped social coherence and integration. Public schools and Qatar University played a role in bringing people from different tribes and families closer to each other. As a matter of fact many cross-marriages would not have happened if it was not for the proximity factor that occurred during the children’s’ schooling years. The Ministry of Education was a mega ministry with satellite cultural attaché offices in main capital cities of the world. Student scholarships abroad facilitated exposure to the academic and life skills to so many Qataris who came back to take on leading roles in the Qatari economy.
As in other sectors of public services the first generation of ministers were those who did not attend formal schooling but they performed under a great sense of devotion and sensibility to social needs. Then came in a second group of formally educated men who played as shadow ministers, they were running the whole show under the elderly ceremonial ministers. The Ministry of Education grew over time to be a huge pyramid, highly centralized, and led at the head by a group of patriarch-mentality first generation formally educated men, and operated by a base largely populated by women. Some of the adverse policies was curtailing women scholarships abroad in 1976, after several years of granting women scholarships. The other was establishing a concrete thick glass ceiling, isolating women from reaching leadership positions in the sector where they were predominantly employed and had the technical background to lead it. Another weakness was leaving early childhood education totally in the hands of the private sector operation without proper quality control. The public education system over time lacked innovative change in the learning environment and did not keep up with changing technology and best practices in schools in this important sector as did other affluent, relatively small nations such as Finland and New Zealand. Neither of these countries, known for their educational excellence, had to dismantle the public educational system to bring excellence in. Excellence by decentralizing education in these two countries was done by the right mechanism; higher parents and community control over schools.
Traditional public schools in Qatar did need innovative instruments and methods to improve the learning environment, but on the other hand the educational content, texts, programs, and the expected outcomes were thoroughly designed by a coherent philosophy compatible with the national identity and philosophy. Some of the public schools within the old ministry of education were known historically for their success but then they were thrown in to the laps of independent school operators, i.e. throwing the whole earlier system, the good and bad, was only throwing the baby with the dirty bath water.
The earlier education system was the one we were all brought up with. We were taught English at the intermediate school level and many of us were able to master the language later on, albeit with an accent but so what? We are better readers, writers and have better math skills than our kids who brought up within the new “reform” strategy. One important reason for this weakness is the loss of the school textbook to a randomness of paper handouts designed at the teacher level. Watering down the curriculum was a tool for private school operators to cut expenses and show higher student success rates that only reflected inflated test scores. Also forcing English as the main medium of learning from the early schooling years was at the expense of Arabic and Islamic studies. Prolonging the school day in other educational system is done to bring in extra- curriculum activities that would improve student social skills and bring out their inner talents. Prolonging the school day in the early years was done in the new “reform” to accommodate Arabic and English due to increasing complaints of losing the Arabic language. Longer school days and low teacher salary packages pushed Qatari teachers and educators to early retirement or to other promising sectors of the economy. Independent school operators would happily choose the cheaper non-Qatari option in the labor market in an effort to increase the profit margin of operating independent schools.
The government did spend millions of Qatari Riyals on international consultants, infrastructure, independent school operators and on an increasing number of foreign school models that were supposedly successful elsewhere. The per student expenditure in Qatar became one of the highest in the world. But spending on education is never a measure for education quality and educational effectiveness. Spending is the price of the educational services multiplied by quantity, if the educational service is highly priced, then the measure will only reflect lower effectiveness and lower efficiency.
The “no color, no smell, no taste” educational reform was followed by piecemeal change; public schools turned into scientific schools, then to independent schools, then came foreign schools brought by business middlemen and funded by the Qatari government to educate Qatari kids, then a surge of private school growth with the lowest quality but nevertheless found their way to the market due to the bottleneck created by the accelerated population growth . Students queued for acceptances and parents were victimized in a system that they were never a part of. The solution was the coupon system for parents to buy schooling from any school available in the market!!
Do we need independent schools in Qatar? In other parts of the world “independent schools are those schools that vary from the mainstream philosophy of the educational system to serve specific needs of smaller ethnic and religious groups within the larger society. Churches established their own schools, some ethnic minority groups that needed to emphasize a specific language or culture. Parent control over such schools is very high, hence the control on quality”[2].
Homogeneity of the Qatari society renders this model unnecessary, while expatriates have their own community schools.
Are these schools then chartered schools?
According to the USA Chartered Schools Organization, chartered schools are defined as public schools where “Chartering allows schools to run independently of the traditional public school system and to tailor their programs to community needs…. Chartered or contracted schools are typically created by a group of parents, teachers, administrators, community leaders or a local community-based organization”[3].
So…
They are not created by individual operators, these schools are under the control and the supervision of the community. Also contracted or chartered schools did not replace public schools in other countries but were only a subset of the whole education system.
Fragmentation of educational philosophy at the school level accompanied by fragmentation of educational supervision where three entities at the top of the educational pyramid plus a minister with dual reporting led to responsibility vagueness and declining accountability. The patriarchal men elite at the top of the centralized traditional educational system in the old ministry of education is replaced by a dominance of fierce female technocracy.
Nowadays there is an opposite move against decentralization due to the many flaws happening without the proper accountability at the school level. And all of a sudden we needed a quick fix for the declining comprehension of Arabic. So are we going back to the pre reform period? Are we coming back in a full circle?
Decentralizing education in Qatar through an ad hoc mix of school types that does not adhere to any unified social philosophy and vision is a dangerous road that would lead our future generations to a deep identity crises. If the linguistic identity and cultural component is already endangered by the globalization process and the increasing decline of the Qatari population proportion within the whole population, then the style of the educational “reform” I would argue is the catalyst to accelerate the death of our cultural identity.
Marginalizing stakeholders will not only alienate them from the choice of educational philosophy but will also continue, with the lack of community effective control, to bring educational quality along a downward curve, a counter outcome for the starting goals of the educational reform initiative.