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Tunisia

Summary

General Assessment: Tunisia has come a very long way in a few short decades in its efforts to spread educational institutions and programs to the Tunisian people, no matter how far apart they may live from the capital. Whereas few women and relatively few men in the rural countryside were literate before independence, school participation rates throughout the country are now sufficiently high that Tunisia is faced with the challenge of creating enough institutes of higher education rapidly enough to meet the needs of the growing numbers of young women and men reaching university age. With vigorous national programs to extend educational efforts and diversify the types of programming and courses offered to Tunisia's youth, coupled with foreign assistance from international donors and other national governments, Tunisia's government appears poised to satisfy the educational requirements of the near future. Considerable challenges remain to be met, however, so that the extension of education proceeds in an equitable manner for women and men, urban and rural, and so Tunisia will be ready to adapt to the demands of the changing global economic environment in which it is increasingly and consciously becoming involved.

Proposed Education Reforms: As President Ben Ali observed in announcing his new priorities for Tunisia's social and economic development in October 1999, key challenges to be met in Tunisia over the next few years, all of which have bearing on education, include: 1) increasing employment opportunities, especially to meet the swell in labor expected to occur from 2000 to 2004; 2) consolidating educational reforms and gains and preventing school dropouts before age 16, strengthening pre-primary education, and promoting and facilitating distance learning; 3) investing more aggressively in information technology and telecommunications, and in scientific and technological research; 4) continuing economic reforms, stabilizing finances, and increasing private investment so Tunisia becomes better prepared to compete economically in a globalizing world; 5) continuing poverty-reduction measures, including access to basic services and better social security provisions; 6) upholding women's equality, preserving the importance of family, and promoting cultural activities; and 7) encouraging regional growth through public investments, by providing fiscal incentives to private investors, and by giving regions greater autonomy over their economic affairs. In order to meet these challenges, Tunisian schools will need to be retooled to a major extent so that students emerge better equipped to apply their school learning to problem-solving in the world of work and so they are trained in the types of job skills the Tunisian economy will need.

Among the reforms in the educational sector that the World Bank identified for Tunisia in its country assessment of March 2000, the most significant appear to involve upgrading teacher skills so instructors are better prepared to deliver high-quality educational programming adapted to student abilities, interests, and needs, revising the curriculum at the basic- and secondary-education levels so that students are given the skills they will need in an increasingly technological and scientifically oriented world, and improving the match between university-level training programs and the needs of the job market so graduates will be able to find employment and will not be faced with a future where their education seems to have little value in the real world. Melded with these efforts to improve education in Tunisia must always be the vision of a motivated student population whose efforts are rewarded by progressive advancement through the educational grades and cycles and who do not become discouraged by overly zealous educators whose instructional demands do not match the students' abilities or preparation levels. What must be turned around clearly is the unfortunate problem of high rates of student retention and dropout—Tunisia cannot afford to lose its students along the way, neither can it afford to educate students so poorly that they are unable to function in a world of increasingly complex demands where their skills will be tested ever more sharply.

Tunisia has done an admirable job of moving from a level of economic underdevelopment to one of great promise and accomplishment. The best the country can do for the Tunisian people in this new millennium is to offer them educational programming that provides them the keys to a future of rapidly transforming opportunities and challenges—keys forged in an educational atmosphere of warm discussion, heated debate, thoughtful inquiry, and experimental reasoning where each student's abilities are sharpened in the unique direction to which that student is attuned so that each individual can contribute his or her best to the community and the larger society as a successful member of the continually evolving, collaborative social venture popularly called Al Jamhuriyah at-Tunisiyah.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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—Barbara Lakeberg Dridi

Additional topics

Tunisia - Teaching Profession

Education - Free Encyclopedia Search EngineGlobal Education ReferenceTunisia - History Background, Constitutional Legal Foundations, Educational System—overview, Preprimary Primary Education, Secondary Education