UNESCO has a long history of involvement in Palestinian education and at present is expanding that role further in view of the transfer of educational authority. In September John Beynon, Director of Development Cooperation in Education at UNESCO in Paris, visited the West Bank to discuss future cooperation with the new Palestinian Ministry of Education (MoE). The Educational Network interviewed him in Jerusalem.
Beynon: UNESCO has been involved in Palestinian education in a number of ways. Firstly, we funded a number of posts in UNRWA; their education department had at it speak a team of 20 educators from UNESCO. From that base we covered development of education for Palestinians in the whole region. Secondly UNESCO had the responsibility of reading the textbooks which were produced on all sides to make sure that no inflammatory language was used, serving as a voice of moderation and neutrality in the midst of a tense situation. UNESCO also provided a forum for international discussion on how education systems are handled when occupied by another government: a window for complaints, so that when schools were closed, for example, it was possible for the Palestinians to lodge a formal complaint to be raised in the Executive Board meeting. Finally, for many years UNESCO has been concerned with direct educational development assistance to liberation movements such as the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the South African liberation organizations.
Quite fortuitously the situation has changed dramatically, both in South Africa and in the Middle East. We are now reexamining how to effectively shift resources previously associated with liberation groups toward direct assistance to governments, in particular in these early stages, to help the Palestinians to get the educational system in hand as quickly as possible.
My mission here is to pull together a cluster of ideas which have all come as requests from the Minister and the PLO. The challenges are, of course, really quite fantastic. Until the 28th of August there wasn't an MoE. There was the department of education of the PLO, which provided certain services, guidance and development, but in context of being a liberation organization. Now we are in the business of reconstructing a system. The Palestinian Authority has certainly been working very fast and has now produced an interim structure; all of the elements are there. I am astounded at the contrast between two months ago and what it is today. There is now a Minister, there are people sitting in key positions, sincere and well-educated. There are also people from the PLO education department who transfer experience and knowledge to the MoE. It is very important for the donors that the MoE has staff that know how to handle salaries, accounts, procedures. But there are certain questions that have to be asked: where does one get the money to pay the staff put into this structure? Appeals for donations from the outside are not the long-term solution; so there's the question of internal revenue generation. The financing of education is crucial.
One main issue of UNESCO has been looking at is the structure and functioning of the Ministry; creating some kind of planning capacity; developing an efficient administration and building capacity through training of the appointed staff. One component of our development support to the MoE is through sharing our experience from around the world, and through our International Institute for Educational Planning, which trains personnel in management positions.
The second thing we are talking about is the question of curricula. The drama, of course, is that the confusion in curricula is substantial; you have different curricula being used as well as three different sectors. We began to discuss curricula for Palestinians in 1990. The idea was to see what we could do to get together a unified curriculum. There is a lot of debate on how to start up curricula; on structure, should the Curriculum Center be autonomous, semi-autonomous, should curriculum be a part of the MoE or linked to higher educational planning? And what about testing, educational research, the training of staff, implementation? We need to get people from the Ministry, UNESCO and from abroad together to discuss the issue. There is a magnificent diaspora of very educated and experienced Palestinians but you don't just pick people up and bring them back; they have to be invited back, it's a matter of creating confidence.
The real question here is what the economy of this population will be. We don't have any data available to project needs in Vocational and Technical Education, for example. What will be the supply system, the direction of the economy? One remark made to me was: "Vocational education, for what? Is it better to be uneducated and unemployed, or is it better to be trained and unemployed?" And educated for what? Contractors, engineers, masons? It depends on what the market is. This is a small population which is not going to be self-sufficient. My guess is that very soon there will be an Economic Community of the Middle East. This is not a time to be copying somebody else's curriculum, this is a time to be thinking of the future; to take a human resource development approach: not just education for development, but education for developing a nation and a people with a certain quality. Here you do have this wonderful thing of Palestinian community colleges, and in that sense the Palestinians are leaps ahead of nearly any other country in the world. The structure of these two year institutions is quite impressive, because they start a program, meet a need, and then they close it down and that's it. Turning these colleges into four year institutions is not in their best interest. The Council of Higher Education is working with the Ministry on how best to respond to control this process, and how to create the motivation for private institutions to be rational in what they plan.
A third major area is the repair of school buildings. This is a gigantic task. Some schools are just not worth spending the money on. And as we're all in a rush to show quick results, the schools concerned are neither too good nor too bad. We signed a plan of operations with the Minister, for a project financed by Saudi Arabia, to repair 16 government schools in Gaza and the West Bank. We are going to clean up, fix up, paint up, and provide these schools with furniture and some basic teaching equipment. The good news is tat there are enough MoE mechanisms in place so that we can implement this directly through the government. It will be Palestinian almost straight down the line. There is a Palestinian acting Director-General in charge, we will recruit a Palestinian engineer and the bidding will be done so that small Palestinian contractors can compete. In this way the money stays in the Territories, which is incredibly important for the local economy. What also really pleases me is that we are strengthening the Ministry.
It is important to understand that UNESCO is not a funding organization: what we do is to mobilize donor funds and spend them well. UNESCO's Director General has set aside some of our seed capital for direct assistance to the Ministry, salaries, computers, the basic things. Some of the remaining money is for organizing seminars and discussion groups that develop project ideas. There will be something on technical and vocational education and on education management. We then are in touch with donors. Donors come with their priorities. Basic education is fashionable at the moment, for example, but we get nothing on teacher training. So what we are working on now is a major programming exercise with all the parties involved in support of Palestinian education. I think that everyone agrees, and certainly the donors, that resources invested should benefit Palestinian children.
The many NGO's associated with UNESCO tend to be the rather big, worldwide ones and we have not used them in project execution. Typically, we implemented projected funded by the UNDP. My observation is that the UN is increasingly sincere in it policies. The days of the donor driven projects are coming to an end; we now have stronger national counterparts. So there's a new era coming, a change in attitude, especially since the Jomtien conference on education (1), towards more of a role for the local people. Now we hire national professionals, which is good. It means that we can work directly with and give some subcontracts to small local NGO's. We don't want to come here with any kind of a dogma; we are providing an opportunity for the Palestinians to learn through their own experiences.
Elaine Clark
Educational Network, POB 66, Ramallah, West Bank
tel: 02 995 6230/fax: 02 995 6231 e-mail: eclark@ednet.birzeit.edu