Letter To The Minister Of Education

Letter to the minister of education

In the modern world, economic growth and the spread of democracy have raised the value of education and increased the importance of ensuring that all children and adults have access to high quality and effective education. Modern education reforms are increasingly driven by a growing understanding of what works in education and how to go about successfully improving teaching and learning in schools.

Over the last two years, the government of Tunisia has increased the proportion of the national budget going to education. Such increase is uncommon but indicative of a greater shift in national priorities to move education up the ladder of importance. Still, for this commitment to translate into positive outcomes for the thousands of children who are in school but not efficiently learning, and other thousands of secondary school-age children who are out of school, your ministery and its partners must address challenges made more complex by on-going conditions of neglect and insecurity.

Doubtless, over the last decades, our country has fallen behind in key areas of education. To keep pace with other countries, we need everyone to be educated and equipped with the skills of the future. Shockingly, our education system has not changed much in the last hundred years. We still require every student to learn the same way, at the same time, in the same classrooms, with the same lectures, using outdated and one-dimensional learning materials. We are more focused on historical subjects versus preparing our best and brightest for the skills they need to excel in a future of innovation and flux. Everyone agrees it’s broken, so why are we waiting? If we wait longer, we will lose another generation of students. We can make education more accessible, more affordable and more relevant using technology. If we embrace what is and what needs to be done, rather than what was, we can move forward.

During past years of corruption and despotism, the youth, who make up the largest proportion of the country’s labor force, have also been the largest percentage of the unemployed. The government and its partners are now tasked with providing employment opportunities for this generation. One way to accomplish this task is to supply them with the appropriate education that can ensure them the chance to get secure jobs after graduation. There are many potential jobs in Tunisia, but there’s a skill gap forming between what’s being taught and what employers require to fill a position. In addition to graduating without the skills for the future, students and their families are spending fortunes on private tutoring during secondary education and accumulating a staggering amount of debt to accomplish tertiary education. Today, students spend dozens of hours a week just on their academics. And many of those students have to take jobs to offset rising costs.

The concept of attending a class at a specific time or meeting with a professor at random and inconvenient office hours can no longer be the norm. This generation is growing up with an entirely different view of how, who with, where and even, what time of day they should learn and interact. Students today have never known a day without technology, the Internet, mobile phones, Skype, Google or Facebook. As a result, they don't understand or value the historical bias that everyone needs to learn

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