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In the past several years, many developing nations, but especially Arab countries, have come to identify a good education system as a cornerstone of economic progress. The urgency for education reform in the Arab world has been manifested in the various initiatives aimed at improving the quality and quantity of education, especially with a rising young population that represents a majority in many countries of the Arab world. Recent years have witnessed many Arab countries making efforts to develop and implement comprehensive education-reform programs that can result in a skilled, knowledge-based workforce in line with socioeconomic goals.

Recent debates on how best to develop the quality of human capital trace back to Article 26 of the United Nations General Assembly’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. We draw from this article and postulate the following education framework for the Middle East, based on internationally proven best practices. This framework combines three major dimensions central to education reform:

• A socioeconomic environment in which social and economic priorities can be translated into a viable education strategy and related goals
• An operating model for the education sector, in which operating entities, good governance, and funding allow for the sustainability of education goals
• An infrastructure (e.g., quality teachers and curricula, reliable assessment and performance measures, and a good learning environment) ready to make such goals attainable

In addition to this framework, an effective implementation represents the other side of the reform coin and requires careful consideration. Effective implementation requires dividing the project into manageable pieces, prioritizing its various processes, ensuring ownership consensus among the stakeholders, and systematically measuring results.

Although there is no single recipe for education-sector reform, the above framework represents an approach that, if followed holistically, should increase the likelihood of success. Thus, any strategy implementation that narrowly focuses on a few elements of the framework—at the expense of others—will likely fall short of providing an optimal reform outcome. This is because each dimensional element is inextricably linked with the others. Countries that adequately connect these dimensions in the implementation phase of their reform program tend to do well in terms of student achievement and human development indicators, whereas those that exclude them tend to fall short.

Download "How to Succeed at Education Reform – The Case for Saudi Arabia and the Broader GCC Region."

study posted March 6, 2008

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