Arab Knowledge Report 2009: Towards Productive

of the qualitative knowledge capital thata society’s educational system can ensure.Every society has the right to ask itseducational system: What is the qualityof the knowledge that will be gained byrecipients in the various educational levels?Does the education system truly createknowledge capital and equip us to competein the knowledge society?The selection of knowledge to betaught in formal educational institutionsderives from a society’s project for theappropriate rearing of its emerginggenerations. It generally takes the formof what are usually termed educationalcurricula, together with their particulartracks or streams, pedagogic methods,and means of assessing whether studentshave attained the desired results. Thechain of selections (some of which areideological in nature) begins with settingthe amount of time to be allocated to eachsubject–mother tongue, foreign languages,maths, humanities, pure sciences, the arts,and so on–at the pre-university levels.But the more crucial gauge in this area iswhether the recipients have obtained theknowledge, skills, and attitudes expectedof them at these levels.KNOWLEDGE CAPITALFORMATION BY CHILDRENEnrolment in basic education is the firststep in formal education towards thecreation of national knowledge capital.To participate in the knowledge societyan individual must possess a range ofknowledge, intellectual skills, and attitudesthat can only be obtained throughcontinuous schooling for, according tomost experts, a period of at least nineyears, or what is commonly referred toas “basic education.” Accordingly, thisreport has analysed four complementaryindicators for evaluating the opportunitiesto create knowledge capital in children:primary school enrolment rates, numbersof children outside school, enrolmentrates in the upper stage of basic education,and average school life expectancy rates.BOX 3-1The Aims of Education for AllThe World Education Forum, held in Dakar, Senegal, in 2000, in response tothe call of UN organisations led by UNESCO, produced a framework for actionentitled “Education for All: Meeting our Collective Commitments.” It provides forcollective international commitment to the attainment of the following goals:1. Expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care andeducation;2. Ensuring that by 2015 all children have access to and complete free andcompulsory primary education of good quality;3. Ensuring that the learning needs of all young people and adults are metthrough equitable access to appropriate learning and life skills programmes;4. Achieving a 50 per cent improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015,especially for women, and equitable access to basic and continuing educationfor all adults;5. Eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2015;6. Improving every aspect of the quality of education.The UN General Assembly incorporated goals 2 and 5 into the MillenniumDevelopment Goals, thereby entering them into the agendas of all UN developmentorganisations.For the qualitative aspect of the formationof knowledge capital in children we willsurvey the different types of knowledgethey come into contact with and the levelsof competence they are expected to attainin each. How, then, do the Arab countriesstand with regard to the foregoing?QUANTITATIVE INDICATORSThe statistics on net primary schoolenrolment rates show that only fourArab countries approach the saturationpoint (95 per cent and above) accordingto this criterion, eight countries rangebetween 80 per cent and 94 per cent,and six–Djibouti, Mauritania, Oman,Palestine, Yemen (and Saudi Arabia) 12 –fall below this, with Djibouti showing arate of less than 40 per cent. We shouldnote, too, that only two countries (Bahrainand Tunisia) have attained the saturationpoint for female enrolment. These figuresclearly reflect large disparities among Arabstates. Gross enrolment ratios, meanwhile,reveal the inflation in enrolment figuresarising from such unhealthy phenomenaas high repetition rates and the packingof classrooms with students beyond thereasonable limit for the designated agegroup of a class. Enrolment rates areinflated by more than 10 per cent in sixThe statistics onnet primary schoolenrolment ratesshow that onlyfour Arab countriesapproach thesaturation point (95per cent and above)EDUCATION AND THE FORMATION OF KNOWLEDGE CAPITAL101