Arab Knowledge Report 2009: Towards Productive

Arab educationalcurricula in generalare almost entirelylacking in activitiesaimed at developinglearners’ abilities tocollect, organise,sift, and analyseinformationBOX 3-2The Sultanate of Oman has recentlymade radical changes in its preuniversitypublic education plans. It hasintroduced the new Basic Educationsystem, which consists of ten years intwo phases, the first covering grades oneto four and the second grades five toten. Basic education is then followed bythe Secondary Education phase whichextends over two years and is dividedinto Arts and Science tracks. Omanhas also introduced the principle ofcoeducation in the first phase of basiceducation. These reforms were putinto effect in the 1998-1999 academicyear with an eye to their gradual rolloutacross the country, as material andhuman resources permit.The newly adopted educationplan marked a clear break with itspredecessor by adding four weeks tothe school year, which is now 180 days,and spreading the educational subjectsover forty-minute long classes perweek, bringing the weekly and annualtimes allocated to instruction up tointernational levels. The Basic Educationcurriculum has introduced classes forfrom sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. Thirtycountries ranked significantly higherthan the international average. Thesewere mostly the advanced industrialisedcountries of Western and Eastern Europe,North America, Asia and the Pacific andthey also included Malaysia, which came intwelfth, and Israel, which came in twentythird.Only 10 per cent of Jordanianparticipants, 8 per cent of students inEgypt, 6 per cent of Lebanese, and 5 percent of Palestinian participants achievedhigh scores; figures for the rest of the Arabcountries were even lower. Globally, 23 percent of participants in the study achievedhigh scores, with higher rates yet in thosecountries that ranked the highest. In otherwords, the knowledge measured by themaths test is possessed by a scant minorityof Arab students and absent among theoverwhelming majority of them.Arab countries also ranked at thebottom (coming in at between thirtyeighthand fifty-first place out of fifty-twocountries) in the science test. Again, theOman’s New Plan for Educationthe instruction of computer skills andaugmented classroom time allocatedto maths, sciences, and social studiesto levels equivalent to or greater thaninternational norms. English languageinstruction has been introduced intothe curriculum, starting in the firstgrade of basic education at an averageof five classes per week. New teachingand self-learning methods have beenadopted with the aim of developinglearners’ mental, practical, and life-skillsfaculties. The new plan retains, to alarge extent, the prominence of Islamicstudies and Arabic language instruction,while it reduces the number of physicaleducation courses in favour of maths.In the secondary school science track,the number of social science classeshas been reduced in order to augmentthe hours allocated to earth- and lifesciences.The progress of this experimentshould be monitored with an eye toassessing its impact on the formationof knowledge capital among newgenerations of Omani youths.results were significantly lower than theinternational average, with the exceptionof Jordan which, with results equivalent tothe global average, ranked thirtieth. About21 per cent of Jordanian students achievedhigh scores, while only about 10 per centof Egyptian and Palestinian participantsand even fewer participants from the otherparticipating Arab countries matchedthis performance. 25 Arab countries haveperformed poorly in other internationalstudies on maths, science, and readingacquisition. 26Arab students continued to performpoorly in maths and sciences in similarinternational studies conducted in 2007.In the studies of eighth-graders, Arabcountries were among the bottom finalistsin maths (between thirtieth and fifty-firstout of fifty-one participating countries) 27and sciences (between twenty-secondand fiftieth out of fifty-one participatingcountries). 28 In the equivalent tests forfourth-graders, Arab countries came inbetween thirty-first and thirty-eighth placeout of thirty-eight countries in maths, 29and between thirty-third and thirty-eighthplace out of thirty-eight participatingcountries in science. 30 No country camenear to approaching the internationalaverages apart from Dubai/UAE, whichranked first among all Arab countries inthe four tests (UNDP, 2007d, in Arabic). 31These studies have shown that while,with the exception of a few details, thescience and maths curricula in countriessuch as Jordan, Palestine, Egypt, andBahrain are largely the same as those inthe rest of the world, Arab educationalcurricula in general are almost entirelylacking in activities aimed at developinglearners’ abilities to collect, organise, sift,and analyse information. They also failto teach how to interpret the phenomenasuggested by the information, fullyprobing all possible ramifications andpossibilities, and other similar skills forthe handling of information and naturalphenomena. The acquisition of such skillsis intimately connected to the developmentof the higher mental faculties individuals106 ARAB KNOWLEDGE REPORT 2009