BEIRUT: "The Arab region is making history in UNESCO," said Vinayagum Chinapah, regional adviser for Educational Planning in the Arab States, referring to a three-day meeting in Beirut which focused on creating an educational strategy in the Arab world. The UNESCO National Education Support Strategy (UNESS) will be specific to each country and will work as a guide for UNESCO and other agencies related to the sector.

"This program started one year ago and all countries are involved, 100 percent. In Asia only 20 percent of the countries are involved, and in Africa, only 10 percent," said Chinapah, who has worked for UNESCO for 17 years.

About 50 participants attended the meeting, representing all 19 Arab countries.

In order to improve education in these countries, Chinapah explained, UNESCO needs to know each country's needs. The UNESCO Cairo office finalized the first report in the region, which is now being used as a model for the rest. It presents the development priority of Egypt, the educational priorities, the partners involved, what UNESCO has been doing for the past five to 10 years in the country, and finally, what UNESCO should do now.

"We want to start implementing a strategy for the government including support and advice for implementation," said Ghada Gholan, UNESCO education adviser in Cairo.

Areas of improvement include quality of education, educational governance and access and equality.

One of the issues noted is the disparities in enrollment rates for women in rural Upper Egypt. As such, one of the goals is to focus on this demographic and reduce the current illiteracy rate of 28.6 percent to 10 percent by 2009.

In regards to quality, the report wants to improve teachers' training, establish a curriculum with a focus on relevant practical knowledge and skills, as well as technical education in order to tackle one of the most pressing issues facing the Egyptian economy - unemployment. According to the report, the number of unemployed increased from 1.8 million in 1993 to 2.15 million in 2004.

Hanen Aidoudi, the UNESCO Consultant for the Beirut Regional Office, explained that the quality of education is also one of the major issues that came up with regards to Lebanon. However, details have not been publicized as the report is on its way to being finished. "We looked at the specific context of Lebanon, had meetings with representatives from the Education Ministry, UN agencies, the World Bank, UNESCO and the Center for Educational Research and Development," she said, explaining the importance of such an exhaustive and precise approach to fit the needs of each country, but also to create a document that ensures agencies in the same fields working on similar issues are not duplicating work.

The countries are divided into categories, placing Lebanon in between since it is neither a conflict country (such as Iraq, Palestine, Sudan and Yemen) nor is it a "developed" country (such as the six oil-rich Gulf states).

Regarding the oil-rich Gulf states, Hamed al-Hammami, director of UNESCO Doha and UNESCO representative in the Arab States of the Gulf, said that there are not any excessive problems in the Gulf regarding education, except that there is a lack of vocational and technical-education training.

"There are hundreds of thousands of expats, and locals look at these jobs as low quality. But we have to train them," he said, to tackle the rising rate of unemployment.

Source: dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=1&article_id=97476