DUBAI - Arab states could face political
and social instability if they underinvest in the education of
their young, expanding populations, a regional education report
said on Wednesday.
A lack of political will rather than insufficient resources
are at the root of the region's inadequate education systems,
with governments spending on security rather than education in a
bid to control their people.
"The security sector is taking a lot of resources. If you
put the same amount of money into education, you get a better
society," Adel Abdellatif of the United Nations Development
Programme said at the launch of the Arab Knowledge Report 2009.
The correlation between education and economic growth in the
Arab world is weak, the report said. Abdullatif said money was
not the issue but rather a fear of the possible results of any
educational reforms.
In 2002-2005, Oman's spending on education equalled 3.6
percent of its gross domestic product (GDP), versus 11.9 percent
for military spending in 2005, according to UNDP data. Saudi
education spending in the same period came to 6.8 percent of
GDP, compared to 8.2 percent on the military in 2005.
"[In the UAE] you can see very clearly that public education
is bad quality, private education is excellent quality," said
Adel Rashed al-Shared, head of a Dubai education foundation.
"We have the money, the investment, we had a huge budget but
education is not moving in the last ten years," Shared said.
Illiteracy is a big obstacle in the Arab world, where around
a third of adults, 60 million people, are unable to read or
write, the report said. Two thirds of these are women.
About 9 million children of elementary school age were not
attending school, with up to 45 percent of the population not
enrolling in secondary education.
"The impact is more poverty in the society, and more
inequality, and more instability," Shared said.