The vanishing homeland
Other Voices
No country, no matter how advanced it is, can make do with itself or advance without the use of the expertise and experience of others, let alone a backward country like us.
The process of speeding up development requires not only the help of others, and starting from where they left, but not wasting effort and money to invent what others have already done.
Therefore, the Ministry of Education, using the expertise of the World Bank in the field of education and curriculum development, spent millions of dinars and signed a contract to study the entire educational system. However, before the implementation of what was agreed upon, the former minister of Education chose to stop this work and ended the contract.
Although there was criticism from some quarters for choosing the World Bank for this task, it is important to know that it was not the first and best option, as it was taken because it fits the degree of low level of competencies in the ministry.
Almost all officials in the ministry are not qualified from the linguistic or scientific point of view to deal with an educational institution more efficient than the World Bank. This is in addition to the flexibility that was shown by the Bank to provide service to match our circumstances, which was rejected by other more efficient institutions. Add to this the government bureaucracy that has played its part.
More importantly, the main factor in the poor performance of the Ministry of Education lies in its teachers and those in higher positions, not to mention the ministry’s low organizational culture, which in brief is tribal, which has nothing to do with performance and output. A visit to some schools in remote areas and even the interior will surely lay bare the general level of government schools.
An education expert, who has been removed from his post to be replaced by relative of a deputy, says he did not meet anyone in the ministry who could ably define competencies input accurately and clearly, and yet one party insists on working with the system and another wants to stop it.
The expert also said he doubts there is a ‘model’ in education that suits Kuwait in light of the low level of most senior officials in the ministry. Add to this the level of the Faculty of Education at the Kuwait University and the Public Authority for Applied Education and Training (PAAET) in terms of competencies and organizational culture that do not exceed the ministry ceiling, which is already low.
On the other hand, one of the ‘luminaries’ of the Education Committee of the National Assembly, said a month ago that the country does not need foreign expertise saying foreign expertise cannot go hand in hand with the Kuwaiti environment, and boasted that Kuwait has people who are competent in this field.
However, this luminary failed to disclose the names of these competent people, or if we will even know them, or when and how the flaccid and backward curricula be taken care of.
An official in charge of ‘education development’ also stated that the ministry will, from the 2020/2021 academic year, start adopting the norms system instead of competencies at the primary and intermediate levels, and that training courses will be held for mentors, department heads and teachers starting from next April.
Nevertheless, it has been found that the Office of International Education (OIE) which is the first educational institution in the world that deals with educational content, methods and strategies of teaching and learning through developing curricula in UNESCO member countries, has stated in an evaluation study of the competency curriculum that it does not suit Kuwait, and the reason is due to the lack of environmental school empowerment related to the study plan, the number of classes and students in each classroom, and that the training programs for teachers and mentors are not sufficient, and therefore the defect is not in the competency system but in us.
From all of this, we see that the Ministry of Education lives in complete abstract atmosphere, although we entirely depend on our hope to get us out of our backwardness.
I do not know why I am writing or expecting the best as long as the state of education is the case of everything else in my small country, from which something vanishes every day.