Education in Palestine
Information Sheet

Background on the Establishment of the Ministry of Education
On the thirteenth of September 1993, a historical document was signed between the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the State of Israel. Known as the “The Declaration of Principles”, the document aimed, among other things, to “put an end to decades of confrontation and conflict” and to “establish a Palestinian Interim Self-Government Authority. . . for the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza Strip” (The Declaration of Principles Document).

This Declaration was a particularly significant historical moment. From an educational point of view, it was important for it was to lead the way for the Palestinians—a colonized people—to have for the first time control over their education. In October 1994, the responsibility for education in the Occupied Territories including Gaza and Jericho was transferred from the Israeli hands (an occupying authority) to the Palestinian National Authorities (PNA). The task of the PNA in delivering educational services to the Palestinians was fraught with many obstacles, the most significant of which was overcoming the problems created by the process of educational neglects in past decades. The PNA inherited a system that suffered not only from the total absence of any development in it since 1967, but also from the absence of basic data on numbers of students at different grade levels, number of teachers in every school, number of classrooms available to the schools, and data on school facilities.

As a system which has always been controlled by a “foreign power”, the greatest impediments to educational quality were the many political factors which have been at play for decades. The prime factor was the lack of an indigenous national government which could develop a vision of a system to serve the Palestinians. The lack of national sovereignty and the machinery of national government led to severe problems in education, leaving the PNA with an exceptionally difficult task of restoring the system’s quality.

When PNA assumed responsibility over education, the infrastructure of the system was wearing out; school buildings were not renovated and new schools were not built except those by the private sector or by the goodness of community leaders. Equipment and materials necessarily for the improvement of teaching and learning were lacking or non-existent. In-service training for teachers was very limited, and pre-service training was inappropriate. The school environment lacked the necessarily incentive for good teaching and learning. Activities within the school centered around the teaching of the core curriculum with no extra-curricular activities or out-of-class learning. Students were adversely affected by the interruptions in their studies due to the closures of schools and educational institutions during the Intifada. In addition, inadequate attention was given to vocational education and training for young people.

Indeed, these conditions have left the PNA and its Ministry of Education (MOE), initially as the Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MEHE), with great challenges to manage and improve the system.

General Developments in Education
The development of education in the Palestinian Territories coincided with its political history. During the Ottoman period, four types of schools appeared: (a) state schools run by the Ottoman government where education was limited to the training of administrative and military personnel or to religious instruction; (b) schools established by Christian missionaries of various denominations who were eager to set up schools in the “Holy Land” as European influence grew in the second half of the nineteenth century; (c) A number of Muslim schools which were also established in the later part of the nineteenth century; and (d) A number of private schools (Christian and Muslim), established by those landowners who wished to advance their children within the Ottoman administration. By 1917, the end of the Ottoman era, there were 379 private schools and 95 state schools.

The years of the British Mandate up to 1948 witnessed a growing demand for education both in the rural and urban areas. The two education systems were separate but certainly not equal in quality and the Arab system did not keep pace with the growing demand for education. The end of British Mandate, however, was also effectively the end of Palestinian society as it had existed. Yet, by 1946, there was a total of 795 schools in Palestine with 118,335 Arab students, 478 were government schools, 134 were private Muslim schools, and 183 were private Christian schools.

Following the 1948 war, Jordan assumed responsibility for the West Bank and Egypt for the Gaza Strip. In the field of education, both states created a government school system in the Palestinian territories under their controls, with elementary (grades 1-6), preparatory (grades 7-9), and secondary (grades 10-12) levels. Both governments also institutionalized a matriculation examination at the end of the 12^th grade for the General Secondary School Certificate, commonly known as the Tawjihi, which is used to assess applicants for post-secondary education. A number of teacher education and vocational education programs were established. Both governments also established a salary and benefit system for teachers and administrators. All textbooks, classroom materials and student-teacher certification procedures originated in Amman or Cairo. At the same time, both governments incorporated materials into the textbooks concerning Arab history and culture.

Since 1950, Palestinian refugees have also had access to education through the programs of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA). Currently, UNRWA provides nine years of education for the children of the majority of registered refugees, and has a large scale operation in health, welfare and community services in Lebanon, Jordan, Syria, and the West Bank and Gaza Strip. UNRWA is still a major provider of schooling up to the preparatory level, both in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

This amalgam of local, Turkish, British, and Egyptian-Jordanian systems of education continued after the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1967. The occupation was assumed by most people, including many Israelis, to be a temporary phenomenon. Thus, while leaving the basic structure of the education intact, the Israeli military government took over the functions of the Egyptian and Jordanian governments with respect to the government operated schools, and did its best to significantly alter the content of education in Palestinian schools. While the implementation of the Jordanian-Egyptian system and curricula continued, the Israeli authorities added further to the alienation within the system by banning and suppressing any reference to Palestinian history and culture. The three systems of education (UNRWA, private and government schools) all were forced to adhere to essentially alien curricula, in which Palestinian culture and history have been ignored or actively suppressed by the Israelis.

During its 27 years of occupation, since 1967, the Israeli Occupation authorities (first military, then civil administration within the Ministry of Defence) exercised general control over all three systems of Palestinian education (UNRWA, government and private), while directly controlling both the finances, and the hiring and firing, in government schools. Government schools, in addition, were placed under the responsibility of the Ministry of Defence, rather than the Ministry of Education.

Factors affecting education in the Palestinian Territories
The quality of education declined drastically after 1967 in government schools more than others. No new schools were built during the first ten years of the Occupation and very few were built after. The expansion of school facilities and the hiring of additional teachers did not keep pace with the dramatic growth in the student population. Classrooms became overcrowded with the average class size in a government school standing 40-60 students. Some classes reached as high as 60 students. Most government schools lacked basic facilities, such as science laboratories, libraries, vocational education workshops, and audiovisual teaching aids. Meager funding and the high number of banned books had limited the schools’ capacity to provide adequate libraries for their students. Similarly, where science laboratories do exist, they lacked sufficient equipment necessary for carrying out practical experiments. Many schools lacked essential facilities such as proper toilets, healthy classrooms and playgrounds. Extracurricular activities, essential for the academic, social and cultural development of the students and for preparation for adult life, including science clubs and cultural lectures.

The decline in teacher quality, the lowering of school standards, and the restrictive measures of the Israeli authorities combined to present a picture of crisis in education on the West Bank and in Gaza. On the eve of the PNA's assumption of responsibility over education, Palestinian education reached a stage of crisis. These crisis may be summarized in the following points:

1. In terms of infrastructure, classrooms and schools were over-crowded. Many school buildings were ramshackle and some were in dangerous structures. Many rural areas had inadequate school buildings and did not have enough classrooms for girls. Many schools operated on a double-shift basis and some had, even, three shifts per day.
2. In terms of equipment and materials essential for better teaching and learning, schools lacked the bear necessities such as proper desks and tables for students, copying machines, computers, audio-visual aids, science laboratories, libraries and library books, physical education equipment, art education supplies and other educational materials including in some instances boards for teachers to write on. Most schools lacked proper specialized laboratories, library rooms, sanitary facilities and safe play areas.
3. In terms of vocational secondary schools, all teaching is done in the classroom and is theoretical in nature for the lack of appropriate workshops.
4. In terms of curriculum and textbooks, there are two types of curriculum offered in Palestine, the Jordanian curriculum and textbooks in the West Bank and the Egyptian’s in the Gaza Strip.
5. No in-service training for teachers took place during the 27 years of Israeli occupation. A significant number of teachers was employed without possessing a teaching qualification. Teachers’ knowledge in some disciplines is considered obsolete as a result of the neglects in the system as a whole.
6. Relevance between education and economic development is an important issue for the Palestinians. This has been lacking especially in the area of vocational and technical education. Public secondary vocational schools and post-secondary vocational and technical colleges were neglected during the Israeli occupation. Student enrollment was continuously dropping. Extra-curricula activities were also totally ignored.

After the PNA assumed responsibility of education, attention was concentrated on working on all of the above mentioned problems in an attempt to correct them and reduce their impact. For example, a unified structure of the system between the West Bank and Gaza was declared, under a unified administration. Through extensive aid program, the MOE embarked on an extensive in-service training program both for teachers and principals of schools, an extensive school-building and school-rehabilitation program, an extensive program for equipping and upgrading schools-furniture and teaching equipment combined by a training program on the use of these equipment, and a program of curriculum development to move the system towards the 21^st century for both the West Bank and Gaza. More importantly, the MOE has launched a five-year developmental program aiming at changing and improving the system.

Structure of Education
The education ladder in the West Bank and Gaza consists of the following cycles:

1. pre-primary (kindergarten) education which lasts for two years and caters for the needs of children in the age group 4-5 years old. It is provided by local or international non-government agencies and organizations.

2. the basic cycle which consists of ten years of education and caters for children aged 6-15 years of age.

3. the secondary cycles which consists of two years and caters for youth aged 16-17 years of age.

4. post-secondary cycle which consists of two years and is vocational in nature. It is offered in technical and vocational colleges and awards the diploma in technical and vocational education.

5. higher education consists of four years or more of education.

School Education
There are three supervising authorities governing education in the Palestinian's territories: Government (PNA schools), UNRWA, and the private sector. The relative size of each sector is given in Table 1. The table shows the distribution of schools, classes, students and teachers in these three sectors in 1995/1996 academic year.

The Table indicates that the total number of schools were 1474 school in 1995/1996. Of these, 1074 were government, 253 UNRWA and 147 private schools. Total enrollment was 661,610 students, with the government schools enrolling 446,777 students (67.5%) of the student population. Number of teachers in the educational system reached 24,342 teachers. Of these, 14,681 (60%) were in government schools. Finally, these students were distributed in 17,962 classes (classrooms). That is the average class size in the RWBGS was 36.8 student/class in 1995/1996, while the student to teacher ratio standing at 27.2 student per teacher.

Table 1 Distribution of schools, classes, students, teachers in WBGS by supervising for the school year 1995/1996

Source: EMIS at the General Directorate of Educational Planning, Research & Development, in the Ministry of Education.

The basic cycle
The basic cycle consists of ten years of education and caters for children aged 6-15 years of age. Prior to 1994, the basic cycle was the combination of the elementary cycle (6 years) and the preparatory cycle (3 years). At the time of its establishment, the MOE achieved the unification of the naming and the length of the cycle in both Gaza and the West Bank in 1994/1995. The MOE combined these two stages, renamed the cycle as the basic cycle, and extended it to ten years of education in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Education at this stage is compulsory and free of charge in government and UNRWA schools.

Students used to sit for an examination at the end of nine years of the basic cycle in Gaza which was abolished after the PNA’s taking over, while no such examination was administered in the West Bank. Students who successfully complete the ten-year basic education cycle are promoted to the two-year secondary cycle according to their marks, their interest, the places available and other relevant regulations.

The secondary cycle
There are two types of secondary schools: academic and vocational. Each is two years in duration. The academic program is divided into two streams: scientific and literary stream, while the vocational secondary education is divided into four streams: commerce, industrial, agriculture, and nursing.

At the end of the cycle students sit for the General Secondary School Examination (Tawjihi). As noted earlier, the Tawjihi used to be administered by the Egyptians in Gaza and the Jordanians through an examination committee in the West Bank. In the academic year 1994/1995, the MOE administered the Tawjihi examination in both the West Bank and Gaza. The Tawjihi certificais now issued by the MOE and has been approved by the Arab University League for admission into Arab universities. The Tawjihi used to be conducted in two phases. In this current academic year, it will be conducted in one phase. The Tawjihi examination has five streams in Gaza and six in the West Bank : scientific, literary, industrial, commercial and agricultural in both, in addition to nursing in the West Bank.

UNRWA schools
UNRWA schools cover only nine grades. Students from these schools transfer to government schools after they successfully complete the ninth grade. As with government schools, UNRWA schools followed the Egyptian curriculum in Gaza and the Jordanian curriculum in the West Bank. They also follow the respective regulations in matters related to curricula, textbooks, study plans, duration of the school year, regulations governing examinations, holidays, promotion, make-up, repetition of classes and so on. Now they follow directions of the MOE and operate within the framework set up by the MOE but under a separate administration (UNRWA).

Private schools
The private sector is mainly interested in the pre-primary cycle, which are run by local or international NGOs. There are few private schools. In the 1995/1996 school year, there were only 11 private schools in Gaza, and 136 in the West Bank. The Gaza private schools have an enrollment of 3632 students while 36916 students are enrolled in private schools in the West Bank. Private schools are subject to the supervision, licensing and control by the MOE. Private schools cover both the basic cycle and the secondary cycle. Some of the private schools are noted for their high standard, while others are of ordinary or even mediocre standards. Some private schools start teaching English or other languages like French or German (in addition to English) from the first grade.

Educational Administration
The system is administered on a central , regional and district level. At the central level is the MOE. The main technical office of the Ministry is located in Ramallah (West Bank), with a technical office in Gaza. The Ministry is an administrative unit created by the PNA, and responsible for executive functions in education; such as administration, planning and policy making, budgeting, monitoring, evaluation and the issuing of certificates.

Internally, the MOE has twelve Directorates General. The Minister is assisted by the Deputy Minister, who in turn is assisted by two Assistants to the Deputy Minister; one for West Bank Education and one for Gaza Strip Education. The Assistant for Gaza heads the Gaza Technical Office. There are professional and administrative affairs of education are run by 15 Directorates Generals.

To assist the MOE to carry its functions at the local levels, thirteen regional Directorates of Education Offices were established, ten in the West Bank and two in the Gaza Strip, in addition to a Directorate of Education for Jerusalem. These regional offices directly supervises the schools; admission of students, appointments/transfer of teachers, training of teachers, collection of data, and monitoring of schools expenditure and finance. The regional offices, whose structure dates back before the Israeli Military Government, play an important role within the Palestinian educational system, especially considering their experience and expertise in supporting the schools in their daily tasks. New structural and organisational form for these offices was established to extend their functions and responsibilities beyond the supervision stage to a stage of direct involvement in development and improvement of the system. This decentralization is important because it allows for the effective functioning of a democratic educational administration, and allows the Ministry to focus on policy issues.

Educational Finance
It is estimated that the total expenditure on all levels of education amounts to approximately US$170 million per year. Of this amount about 80 per cent is spent on primary and secondary education. The source of 50 per cent of the public expenditure is the tax revenues obtained from income tax, VAT and customs and excises. The rest is obtained from fees and charges such as school fees or education taxes.

The Ministry of Education intends to budget the sum of approximately US$350 per student per year for recurrent costs. This compares to the amounts spent by both Jordan and UNRWA. At current enrollment levels this would require an annual budget of US$140-150 million. However, the annual budget could rise to over US$200 million depending on increases in student enrollment as a result of Palestinians returning from Diaspora.

In addition to this recurrent budget, the MOE has estimated that it needs another US$100 million as capital investment for school construction, rehabilitation and maintenance as well as for the purchase of equipment. Another estimated US$200 million will be needed for curriculum development and teacher training projects.

It is expected that the long-term revenue for supporting the education system will be secured through the tax collection. Nonetheless, the revenue currently available does not appear to be sufficient to meet the needs of the education system, so that substantial external inputs will be required for recurrent budget substitution as well as for capital investment and project funding.

Education Staff
One of the main goals of the MOE is to improve the quality of the education staff in order to improve the services provided to the students. Hence, the MOE aimed at hiring more teachers, administrators, and genitors. There were increases in the number of education staff employed by both the government and the private sectors in general and in the number of teachers in particular.

Quality of Teacher
Again, the MOE aims at improving the quality of teachers by making sure that those newly hired are holders of a bachelor degree. Moreover, MOE tries either to chose well trained teachers or to train teachers who are not trained.

Buildings
A considerable percentage of school buildings, specially in urban areas, are rented from the private sector. These rented buildings were designed and constructed for residential purposes, warehouses or livestock shelters. All these buildings, with their narrow spaces, can not, by any means, meet the educational conditions and requirements.

Many schools lack the basic comfort requirements, such as lightening, paved court yards, playgrounds and passways, toilet units, shades, canteens and paintings. Even more, many schools have not been receiving necessary maintenance and rehabilitation works for a long time, which in tern creates safety problems. During the years of occupations, many buildings in the educational system became ramshackle due to the lack of maintenance and poor construction standards. Excessive deflections, excessive settlements in the substructure and structural cracks can be clearly seen in both the horizontal and the vertical structural elements of the buildings.

Quality of Education
The Palestinians have always had a reputation of maintaining a high quality of education system. Lately, however it seems that this may no longer be true. International educational achievement testing results have shown the Palestinian students are lagging behind in comparison with students in neighboring countries, especially in areas such as maths and science.

Many factors have led to the decline in the quality of education. One reason is the loss of school time during the Intifada resulting from frequent school closures, curfews and other restrictions. In addition, the learning environments are generally in poor to very poor condition, due to the lack of financial resources for maintenance or construction. In the West Bank, schools have been set up in rented buildings which were not constructed for such purposes. Many schools operate on double to triple shifts. Classes are overcrowded with up to thirty-five students in one classroom allowing each student less than 1 meter square instead of the minimum of 1.5 meter square per student. An important goal the MOE was to reduce class size and replace double shift schools with single shift schools. The student / teacher ratio is about thirty-five students per teacher in Gaza Strip and at twenty-five in the West Bank.

The teaching staff is, for a large part, not sufficiently qualified. More than 65 per cent of the teachers have the teacher training diploma provided by the community colleges after a course of tow year duration and therefore often do not have sufficient knowledge of their subjects. There has been no significant in-service teacher training to improve and update their knowledge of either subject or teaching methods during the past twenty-seven years.

Crowded classes
Many schools suffer from over-crowding, not only in terms of the number of students per classroom, but also in terms of the space in squared meters per student. This resulted from the small rooms in the rented buildings and old schools which were constructed without specific norms and standards.

Relevance
There is little correlation between the educational system and human resources needed in the current labour market for the creation of a healthy Palestinian economy in the future. Historically, the education system was academically oriented providing basic literary and numerically skills to the majority of the population. During the past twenty-seven years of occupation, however, the highest demand was for unskilled or semi-skilled labour. Thus today 50 per cent of the labour force has ten or more years of education but only 15 per cent hold high or mid- professional jobs. The highest unemployment rates are among university graduates.

In addition, the educational system has shifted from a well balanced one to one entirely dominated by literary, social science and humanity studies at secondary as well as tertiary level. This coincides with a rising demand in vocational, technological and scientific knowledge in today’s modern economies. Even in the West Bank’s and Gaza’s strained economics technical and technological graduates meet no employment problems. There is thus a need for strengthening vocational education at the secondary level, and all this is fully understood by the MOE. In the long term the Ministry needs to make some policy decisions as to how it can better adjust the education system to the Palestinian human resource needs.

Donor Coordination
The MOE is doing its best to move away from listing emergency priorities to define its needs through a comprehensive Five-Years Plan. The International and Public Relations Department within the Ministry developed its mechanism for mobilizing extended donor support for education through its regular meetings with the donors.

Sector Working Group on Education
In the Sector Working Group ( SWG) on Education, the Shepherd is France, the Gavel Holder is the Palestinian Authority, MOE. Larger, donor-attended meetings are now arranging every two months while frequent meetings of a small “ steering committee” consisting of France, the Ministry, UNICEF and UNESCO have proved essential in strengthening the group’s direction and strategy.

Since its establishment in January 1995, the SWG on Education has achieved significant progress in dissemination and sharing of information, and in helping to define Palestinian priorities for donor fundraising. Representatives from the non-governmental organization ( NGO) network on Education. The Gavel Holder credits the SWG forum with whitening donor awareness of the Ministry’s needs and with facilitating in public relations and fundraising concerning donations to and projects in the sector.

The Gavel Holder has encouraged the SWG meetings to focus on topics including presentations on Palestinian NGO priorities in education, the status of female education, and coordination mechanisms supported by the Ministry of Planing and International Cooperation. Future topics will focus on technical and vocational education, and donor experience in working with the Palestinian Authority and the MOE. All meetings include updates from the MOE on sectoral priorities and donor contributions.

The following Palestinian priorities in education have been defined by the gavel Holder:

• School rehabilitation and construction: To solve the problem of over-crowded schools and accommodate the natural population growth rate of 4%, 40 new schools are needed each year. Estimated costs: US$230,000,000.

• Provision of schools with equipment and educational materials. Estimated costs:US$5,000,000.

• In-service teacher training: Programs to improve teaching standards of 20,000 teachers currently employed in the public sector. Estimated cost: US$ 3,000,000.

• Curriculum Development Center: Production of the first Palestinian textbooks. Estimated cost:US$5,000,000.

• Development of vocational education and industrial secondary schools. Estimated cost not yet available.

• Inclusive education ( having students with some disabilities at schools with other normal students). Estimated cost is not yet available.

The MOE continues to be constrained by a highly restricted budget unable to meet even the most urgent costs of running a deteriorated school system. No significant funds exist for sectoral development. The SWG is committed to consolidating donor activity and to supporting capacity building efforts in the Ministry of Education to increase its absorption capacity. The Gavel Holder has found the SWG a valuable forum for informing donors of education priorities and for encouraging donors to consider proposals for multilateral and bilateral support. The Shepherd of the SWG on Education continues to coordinate and facilitate donor needs in the sector.

Ministry of Education

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