Lebanon: private education soars, public education sinks
Despite a student-teacher ratio of 7-1, public education in Lebanon ranks poorly worldwide and reform is urgently needed.
The latest sparring over the ranks and salaries scale has revealed a structural flaw in the Lebanese economy at the level of public spending. It also raised the issue of reforms and controlling waste at all levels by directing attention toward how the Lebanese parliament failed to develop a plan to rationalize public spending and opted for easy but costly solutions based on raising taxes.
Lebanon's educational sector needs deep structural reform, perhaps more than any other. Education has long been a vehicle of wealth for Lebanon, which interacted with Arab neighbors and the world through that sector. It is unfortunate that teachers are the first to pay the price for the lack of reform by losing their rights. The Lebanese economy is paying for both the money being squandered and the missed opportunity for the economy and future generations.
The educational sector was and still is one of Lebanon’s most important distinguishing features. This is not surprising for a country that used to be called the “school of the Middle East.” The numbers and data issued by the World Economic Forum emphasize this. The latter’s 2014 Global Information Technology report ranks Lebanon 13 out of 148 worldwide in “quality of educational system,” owing to its high standards. Lebanon’s educational sector ranks second after Qatar’s among the Middle East and North Africa. However, this is all thanks to the private sector. The public education sector needs deep restructuring, as recommended by the report released earlier this month by the Lebanese BLOM Bank.
Reforming public education should focus on the number of teachers and their performance, particularly in math and science, according to the BLOM report. The numbers showed a contradiction: Although Lebanon ranks high globally, its scores, according to the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, are 406 in science and 449 in math, which are below global averages. This is clear evidence of the abysmal gap between public and private education in Lebanon.
