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Mr. Kabir Shaikh's Paper
Director of Education
UNRWA
Key
note: At the
opining of EFA Conference: Palestine 27 April, 2004
Assalam alaikum.
I apologie for not
speaking in Arabic. Personally, I blame Minister Abu
Hommus for this. His English is much better than my Arabic but
he has never made a serious effort to teach me Arabic!
I bring to you the
greetings of our commissioner General, Mr. Peter Hansen whose
personal commitment to education is very high needed. He is unable
to come as he is travelling but he sends his very best wishes for
the success of this important conference.
To me EFA is
absolutely important. An estimated 113 million children of school
going age are not in schools as we speak. 60% of them are girls.
Even if we decide to buy them a pencil and a simple exercise book
the cost will be around $300 m. I mention this because education
dose not came cheap. People in the position of making policy
decisions must know this and they must decide their priorities
accordingly.
In total there are 875
million people who are illiterate.
The most important of
the six Dacar goals is to enhance the quality of education.
But I will come to that later.
UNRWA provides support
for 4.2 million Palestinian Refugees in Gaza, West Bank, Jordan.
Syria and Lebanon. in Health, Education, and Social services. The
education component is the largest providing education for nearly
500.000 children with nearly 20.000 staff. UNRWA also offers
Vocational Education and Training to about 5000 youth. 64% of all
trainees are women’s. UNRWA’s education service is the single
largest education service in the UN system
There are a number of
key initiatives taken by UNRWA Education. They include:
-
Computer Information
Technology Initiative ( CITI)
-
Education Management
Information System (EMIS) – we have linked all Fields of
operations to collect Quality Information .We have also
established an Education Intranet to link teachers to share
information about their ideas, methods of Teaching, vision and
good practice.
-
Human Rights,
conflict resolution and tolerance, if anyone needs to know about
Human Rights I think it is the Palestinian children some of whom
seem to have lost their right to childhood.
-
School as a focus for
development, this is an important initiative. We believe that the
school take the responsibility for its development, articulate its
mission and produce a Development, Plan for what it wishes to
achieve. All key players including the community should
contribute to this Development Plan. This, we are doing through a
DFID project and I am delighted that DFID's senior Education
Advisor Mr. Digby Swift is here to attend this important
conference.
-
A very important part
of this project is establishing a Quality Assurance framework.
UNRWA
works closely with Palestinian Authority and I admire Minister
Abu Hommos for his personal commitment to education, his vision
and his hard work. He is also a warm personal colleague.
UNRWA and the
Palestinian Authority work together in areas such as
·
Curriculum
Development.
·
Teacher
Training.
·
Cross Curriculum
areas.
·
Working Groups
and policy development.
We also have some
joint challenges. We are both delivering the EFA in a slightly
superficial way. I say that because an important aspect of
education is its quality. Without quality delivering EFA is not
really a success. EFA is not just about numbers. Its most
important aspect is the enhancement of Quality Education.
What dose Quality
mean? Quality is an elusive concept. Different people have
different views about it. The most comfortable definition of
Quality for me is fitness for purpose. That, of course means that
we have to be very sure and clear about the purpose which in itself
is not an easy thing.
However, at a simple
level we can look for Quality in education in these areas.
(A)
Children's learning Experiences: Are
our children going through meaningful learning?
Are
their experiences rich, stimulating, challenging, and engaging? Or
they are only engaged in rote learning to pass exams?
Do they acquire the
skills of thinking, creativity, Imagination and problem solving or
they are passive recipients interested only in the recall and
recollection of knowledge?
(B)
Curriculum: what they learn?
·
Dose the
curriculum emphasize the retention of knowledge or its application?
·
Dose it prepare
them to pass exams or to transfer and use the knowledge to newer,
different situations?
·
Dose it provide
them with rigid thinking patterns or does it makes them creative
thinkers and learners?
·
Dose it help
them in learning to learn or it makes them only passive learners?
I would like to
mention, one particular area of the curriculum – the Religion – does
our Religious Education Curriculum capitalize on the deep and key
values and principles of humanity so necessary for a global society
in which we live. Dose it inspire and enlighten them on such global
values so well embedded in the Religion or do we just convey a sense
of rigidity of values?
(C) Our
schools and our Teachers: Education is
a process where our raw materials, finished products and our tools
are all human beings. That’s why it is a slow process. That is why
we have to think about our teachers.
·
Are they well
trained?
·
Do they inspire
and excite their students?
·
How do they
assess their own performance – individually and collectively? i.e.
as an institution.
·
What Quality
Assurance Systems are in place?
·
Are they adding
value to the education system or they are doing most of the same?
Education is not
simply learning. Education is also not about the children – it is
about "the child". That is why it is so important. That is why we
cannot simply deliver it without a serious consideration for its
Quality.
There are also regional
challenges but I would not list them here because the speakers
before me have already mentioned them.
I want to end now by
taking the liberty of paraphrasing India's Nobel Laurete Poet
Ravindranath Tagoe.
Where mind is free and
the head is held high
Where words come from
the depth of truth.
Where the clear stream
of reason has not lost its path into the dreary desert sand of dead
habit.
Into that Heaven of
freedom, Father, let my soul a wake.
Ladies and Gentleman,
Freedom and Education are closely linked. That is why education is
so important!
Assalam alaikom wa
rahmatullah wa barakatuhu
Kabir Shaikh
27 Apr. 2004
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