{"id":1407,"date":"2026-08-11T17:18:40","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T17:18:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bahamakkawi.com\/?p=1407"},"modified":"2026-08-14T12:55:37","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T12:55:37","slug":"education-first-reflections-on-the-state-of-education-in-our-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bahamakkawi.com\/en\/education-first-reflections-on-the-state-of-education-in-our-country\/","title":{"rendered":"Education First: Reflections on the State of Education in Our Country"},"content":{"rendered":"There is now broad agreement on the close connection, deep relationship, and mutual interdependence between education and development. The world has reached a conclusion that has become almost self-evident: there can be no development without education, upbringing, and learning, and the first condition for development is the building of the human being capable of driving it.\n\nScholars point out that the principal obstacle to development in the Arab world does not necessarily lie in a shortage of resources or insufficient funding, but rather in the absence of the human agent of development. They often cite the experience of Japan, which possesses relatively limited natural resources but has succeeded because it possesses the human capabilities required for development.\n\nAt the same time, the world faces major challenges in this field. Mr. Marcio Barbosa, Chief Executive Officer of the Education Above All Foundation, stated that one in every eleven children worldwide is out of school. Despite the efforts of the international community, conflicts and disasters continue to place enormous pressure on the provision of education, and there are few signs that this growing problem is declining. Addressing it therefore requires coordinated efforts from all sectors.\n\nRecent UNESCO reports indicate that approximately 757 million people worldwide over the age of fifteen are illiterate, including 115 million young people, with women accounting for 59 percent of the total. Illiteracy is estimated to cost the global economy around USD 1.19 trillion. In the Arab world, approximately one in every five adults is illiterate, or about 19 percent, while UNESCO estimates the illiteracy rate in Sudan at around 24 percent.\n\nThe Education for All Global Monitoring Report, published by UNESCO toward the end of 2015, presented the following findings concerning Sudan:\n\nSudan was the only Arab country with legislation making pre-primary education compulsory, a policy in place since 1992. This placed it alongside developed countries such as Switzerland and Denmark. Despite this, Sudan was not listed among the countries that achieved significant progress toward universal primary education between 1999 and 2012.\nSudan developed a special education plan for pastoral communities, but the related policy measures did not necessarily lead to increased school enrollment among nomadic populations.\nSudan ranked near the bottom among countries that increased education spending as a proportion of national income. A recent study of government spending on education in Sudan showed that public expenditure on education averaged no more than 3 percent of total public expenditure, equivalent to approximately 1 percent of gross national product.\nSudan was classified within the low category of the Education for All Development Index, alongside Eritrea, Chad, and Rwanda, and was the only Arab country included in that category.\n\nThese weaknesses have also been reflected in higher education in Sudan. In the Global Education Quality Index issued by the World Economic Forum in Davos, which covered 140 countries, Sudan fell outside the competitive rankings altogether.\n\nThe positions of Sudanese universities in the World Universities Ranking were also disappointing. The University of Khartoum was ranked 1,689th, followed by Sudan University of Science and Technology at 3,266th, and the University of Shendi at 6,006th.\n\nThis situation can be attributed to a number of factors, including inadequate education budgets, the migration of qualified academic staff, weak curricula, insufficient professional training for university lecturers, inadequate attention to educational quality, the limited number of published academic studies, and weak university websites. Ultimately, many of these problems stem from insufficient funding and the failure to give education adequate priority in annual budgets.\n\nAddressing the obvious weaknesses affecting education in Sudan requires a serious and candid reassessment. Educational institutions must take labor market needs into account and equip their graduates with the skills and competencies required for employment.\n\nEducation planning must therefore be carried out in partnership with civil society and the labor market. The lack of coordination between educational institutions and employment markets has created a paradox in many countries: graduates remain unemployed on the one hand, while employers continue to import foreign labor on the other. This makes coordination between educational institutions and the labor market essential.\n\nJust as there is a gap between educational outcomes and development needs, there is also a gap between general education and higher education. This is largely due to the absence of a strong culture of quality in education.\n\nIf we genuinely seek progress, we must commit ourselves to international standards of educational quality. Teachers and university lecturers should be trained in quality assurance systems, while schools and universities should be required to establish dedicated quality units.\n\nThe state should also conduct regular reviews of schools, higher education institutions, academic programs, institutional performance, and the overall educational environment. These are urgent and essential measures without which the education system cannot improve or compete effectively.\n\nOne Arab expert, Professor Ali Habish, summarized his vision of what education ought to be in eloquent terms. He argued that we need an education system that preserves the nation\u2019s identity, distinctiveness, and accumulated experience; one that makes effective use of technology; moves society from manual labor toward knowledge-based work; from narrow specialization toward flexibility and broad knowledge; from centralization toward decentralization; from hierarchical organization toward network organization; from standardization toward excellence; and from a single option toward multiple alternatives.\n\nResponding effectively to current transformations therefore requires innovation and creativity in the educational process, including a new structure capable of moving the nation away from a scenario of decline and toward one of progress and advancement.\n\nIn this regard, education experts have proposed the concept of the \u201ceducational tree\u201d as an alternative to the \u201ceducational ladder.\u201d There is an important distinction between the two.\n\nThe educational ladder implies a fixed beginning, a predetermined sequence, and a defined end. The educational tree, by contrast, conveys the idea of continuous growth and development. It has a central trunk representing basic education, along with multiple branches that allow citizens to climb upward through different paths and to move horizontally from one branch to another.\n\nIt also creates permanent opportunities for citizens to re-enter the education system regardless of their age, previous educational level, or field of specialization.\n\nThe educational tree is therefore a metaphor for a common foundational trunk of education through which all students pass during the basic education stage endorsed by the 1990 World Conference on Education for All in Jomtien, Thailand.\n\nThe essential learning needs at this stage include basic learning tools such as reading, writing, oral expression, problem-solving, and numeracy, as well as essential learning content such as knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes required for human survival and development.\n\nAfter this foundational stage come the branches, which metaphorically represent the various other fields of knowledge. Under the educational tree model, individuals enjoy greater freedom to choose the forms of knowledge that best correspond to their interests and inclinations.\n\nDeveloping education also requires the model teacher\u2014a teacher characterized by high levels of competence, strong academic, professional, and ethical standards, and the ability to contribute effectively to learning, which is ultimately the art and science of developing human beings.\n\nEducation must also be linked to training, practical experience, and the development of knowledge capable of generating progress, strengthening competitiveness, and building a technological civilization.\n\nThis requires an educational, cultural, and social system that instills respect for the value of time, the value of quality, and the value of excellence and mastery.\n\nHigher education represents a strategic asset for the state. It must therefore receive the highest level of attention through improved quality, stronger academic standards, and the modernization of curricula in accordance with contemporary trends.\n\nForeign-language instruction should be introduced as a compulsory subject across all university faculties. Academic staff should be encouraged to devote more time to scientific research, with adequate funding provided for research activities.\n\nUniversities should also become more open to society, support student activities, conduct regular performance evaluations, and adopt comprehensive quality-management systems.\n\nIn addition, an independent national non-governmental institution should be established to assume responsibility for external quality assessment in higher education institutions, with formal links to comparable institutions in advanced countries.\n\nIn short, we must first determine clearly what we want from education and what kind of education our society actually needs.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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