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Algeria is the second largest country in Africa, after the Sudan. Located in northern Africa, Algeria is bordered by the Mediterranean on the north, on the west by Morocco and Western Sahara, on the southwest by Mauritania and Mali, on the southeast by Niger, and on the east by Libya and Tunisia. The present boundaries were set during the French conquest in the nineteenth century. Algeria is rich …
Algeria was under French constitutional rule until independence was gained in 1962. The first Algerian constitution was adopted in 1963, and a second followed in 1976, which was amended in 1988 and 1989 and revised in 1996. In the 1996 constitution, the preamble emphasized the Arab, Islamic, and Amazigh (Berber) identity of Algeria. The beginning articles of the constitution declared that Algeria …
The educational system is structured into primary foundation school for nine years, followed by secondary education school for three years, and then the tertiary (university) level. Algerian education is still grounded in the French fact-acquisition orientation, and teaching is almost exclusively in the lecture and memorization mode. In 1996, the total enrollment at primary and secondary
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The government pays most of the costs (approximately 83 percent) of nurseries, kindergartens, and community-based centers with parents paying the rest. In private centers, parents pay all the costs. Preschool educational institutions, authorized in 1976 by the Ministry of Labor and Social Works are governed by laws updated in 1983, 1985, 1988, 1990, and 1992. Children in preschool public instituti…
The first year of secondary education is comprised of a core curriculum in which courses are grouped into three general areas: accala (languages and social sciences), des sciences (natural and physical sciences and mathematics), and technologie (mathematics, physical sciences, design, and technology.) Extracurricular activities, sponsored by the school or parent associations, are important and inc…
Universities are organized into institutes, each of which coordinates several departments. National institutes of higher education, though smaller than the universities, offer degrees in a variety of fields. The engineering schools (grandes écoles) include polytechnic, veterinary medicine, architecture and urbanization, agriculture, information, telecommunications, and ocean science. Teache…
Government Educational Agencies: Algerian education remains highly centralized even though there is a stated aim of gradual decentralization. The Ministry of National Education is the controlling body. The ministry is charged with all activities relative to the education of children of school age (foundation, general secondary, technical secondary, and tertiary) including the programs, evaluation,…
Literacy: Adults who acquire literacy through adult programs have great difficulty retaining it, a problem that also occurs with early school dropouts. Post-literacy programs, therefore, are more than remedial measures for ensuring the retention and stabilization of literacy skills. They are intended as lifelong education aimed at improving the quality of life through the continuation and applicat…
Training & Qualifications: Primary school teachers are trained at institutes of educational technology (institute de technologie de l'éducation). Students graduating from intermediate schools enroll in these institutes for two years, the last year as a student teacher. Success on the terminal examination leads to the certificate of general culture (certificat de culture genera…
Arabization in the education system included replacing foreign instructors with Arabic teachers, replacing the Eurocentric curriculum with an Arabic/African one, and replacing French with Arabic as the medium of instruction. Not everyone was pleased with the results. "The Arabization in the schools has actually often been managed under disastrous conditions and has delivered a generation of…
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