‘Educational system set aside over other interests’

KUWAIT CITY, July 12: The development projects at the educational level are swaying to and fro and may be shelved for various reasons including changes in the ministerial portfolio or due to the retirement of the senior officials holding supervisory positions, or outside pressure and popular considerations, and sometimes when people are to settle political accounts and all this happens without taking into account the future of generations or prioritizing the interest of the educational system over other interests, reports Al-Rai daily.

An official educational source told the daily that the file of some canceled projects, including the school administration development project, which has a completion rate of 94.6 percent, and consumed about 1,120 hours of training and 9 years of financial spending, then stopped suddenly without justifications, indicating that the project began in 2009. He explained that the project, which was submitted to the Parliamentary Education Committee, and has not yet been addressed, included administrative and organizational reforms through 4 main frameworks, -- concepts for developing school administrations, a new organizational structure for the school, guidelines for the development of school administration and the school management training plan.

Administrative structure
He added, “Schools were based on their old administrative structure 50 years ago and have not been developed, which prompted the adoption of 5 guidelines for the development of school management and the development of a clear training plan for administrative and supervisory leaders in the school and the educational region.” He pointed out that the project was halted in the year 2017 during the reign of the former Minister of Education, Dr. Hamid Al-Azmi, after he obtained the approval of the Steering Committee in the Ministry of Education, then the National Agency for the Improvement of Education in Scotland, which is the first agency in the world concerned with the development of education and dates back to 1840, and it has experts with a high level of competence in the educational field, and they are called ‘Queen’s Inspectors’.

National indicators
He went on to say, “We, with national elements, adopted the national indicators for the project and presented them to the agency, which expressed its admiration for this progress, and said usually some Gulf countries request the preparation of a reference framework and educational indicators for them, but we in Kuwait came with our indicators and framework, and this indicates our progress over other countries’ district,” stressing that about 60,000 participants in diagnosing the school management development project, including students, parents, teachers and other groups from all educational spectrums, which was finally canceled in 2017.

The source moved to another project, a project to diversify secondary education paths, which was halted with the retirement of the Undersecretary of Public Education, Fatima Al-Kandari. He pointed out that among the other projects that were canceled were the Integrated Program for the Development of Education, the teacher’s license, the World Bank agreement, the rental of tablets, and many other important projects that were canceled due to some or other reasons. MP Dr. Hassan Jowhar submitted a proposal to the National Assembly in August 2021 regarding the necessity of “issuing a decision to create an organizational structure, according to what was stated in the developed school administrations project, and to include the new organizational unit in the integrated civil service systems and to address the Civil Service Bureau in this regard to take the necessary action.”