Education Reform in Kuwait: Doing it Differently

WASHINGTON: The Kuwaiti Minister of Education and Higher Education Dr Bader Al-Essa attended this week an event with a wide group of World Bank education experts in Washington DC to showcase a large education reform effort in Kuwait and to exchange views on relevant global experiences. The reform effort, launched in 2010 and supported by the World Bank, aims to modernize the public school system in the country.

During this remarks, Minister Essa mentioned that that “Kuwait recognizes the need for greater emphasis on quality in education and on institutional capacity, as well as for system-wide reforms.” He also emphasized the importance of early childhood development and inclusive education - and said that the goal of the Ministry of Education is to “transform Kuwait’s entire education system towards becoming fully competence-based. The Ministry of Education, in partnership with the World Bank, experts worked very closely on designing a homegrown reform program, the most important investment Kuwait can make for its future”, he further added.

At the event, World Bank’s Practice Manager for Eastern Europe and Asia Cristian Aedo stated that “4.5 percent of Kuwait’s GDP is spent on education, but outcomes are below expectations, so there is lots of room to improve efficiency of the system”. Harry Patrinos, Practice Manager for East Asia and the Pacific stressed that “parents should be empowered to contribute to kids’ school quality, and private schools should be accountable to the public system”, in addition to investing in teachers and assessing students, “if you don’t know where you are, you can’t improve”.

The educational reform efforts in Kuwait encompass the introduction of a competence-based curriculum across public schools; developing a conducive environment for effective teaching; enabling schools to be active centers of learning; and strengthening systems for enhanced accountability and evidence-based decision-making.

One of the great successes of the program to date has been the development and roll-out of a competence-based curriculum in grades 1,2 and 6. This process, led by local experts with technical assistance from the World Bank, has resulted in a nationalized curriculum that provides a balance of national values and traditions combined with international best-practice in curriculum design.