3. Emerging governance considerations within the MENA region

In several MENA countries, teachers hire themselves out to give private lessons for a fee, where they coach students for the test. In the absence of accountability mechanisms, this creates an incentive not to teach thoroughly, and leaves families feeling compelled to spend money to guarantee their children’s success. In a number of MENA countries, inefficiencies abound and repetition rates remain very high. In Lebanon, for instance, repetition rates for primary and secondary education were over 10 percent at the time of appraisal of the Second Education Development Project (World Bank, 2019b).

Efforts to address these challenges have often been stymied by instability within the region. In the case of Lebanon, for instance, the Second Education Development Project targeted a 25 percent reduction in repetition rates. Yet this provision was ultimately dropped in the face of other, more urgent priorities at the time of the Syrian refugee crisis. The Syrian refugee population was close to one-third of Lebanon’s total population. More than 500,000 Syrian students entered the education system in a very short period. The goal of reducing repetition, and generally improving governance and efficiency, was seen as no longer possible given the need to enroll large numbers of Syrian refugee children.

In Egypt, the government goes to great lengths to prevent cheating, deploying police to guard examination papers, which are transported in boxes sealed with wax. However, this has not prevented cheating, as questions and answers have been uploaded on social media and openly discussed. Students have justified their cheating by saying that the exams are too difficult21 .

3. Emerging governance considerations within the MENA region

COVID-19 and Education Governance

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in unprecedented school closures, reaching over 40 weeks in Saudi Arabia, Syria and Kuwait, with an average of 28 weeks across the region, compared to a worldwide average of 22 weeks. The closures created significant learning loss, as well as unique governance challenges for which MENA countries were generally not well prepared. It led to a series of setbacks as described below, including a widening digital divide. Yet the investments in edtech also created unexpected momentum for improved governance in many countries. They have increased transparency and information-sharing, as most MENA countries created virtual platforms for sharing information with educators and families.

On the negative side, the effects of the COVID-19 school closures and disruptions were felt most acutely by those who were already vulnerable. Across the MENA region, an estimated 40 percent of all students were left without support during the pandemic22. Most of these students, 37 million in number, were already vulnerable and at risk before the pandemic began. In some MENA countries, remote learning initiatives were only available at certain grade levels. In other countries, there were remote learning options but they were unavailable for those who didn’t have the digital devices and internet connections to access them. In Libya, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, for example, less than 35 percent of the population has access to the internet. This pre-existing digital divide resulted in a disproportionate lack of access to remote learning for children in pre-primary and primary school, and for children in rural areas. Fewer than

21 Youssef 2016. 22 Data in this section are drawn from Nannyonjo et al. (2021).

half of the MENA countries supported home-based learning in any way, and most children were cut off from other school-based services such as school feeding (consistently offered only by Saudi Arabia during the pandemic). Even the wealthier countries within the region showed very significant disparities in access to learning based on socioeconomic considerations. In Saudi Arabia23, for instance, while 74 percent of students reported having a computer they could use for school work, only 43 percent of students from the bottom quintile reported having a computer they could use for school work. This gap of 31 percent was almost three times higher than in the OECD , where it was 11 percent.

On the positive side, the investments in edtech have led a number of countries in the region to create or strengthen Learning Management Systems, which are platforms for hosting and tracking online learning content. Oman, the UAE and Qatar removed a ban on the use of VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) to facilitate the organization of virtual classes.24 In Morocco, communications firms provided free internet access to students. Virtually all countries in the region have seen improvements in digital data management and information sharing and use within the public sector, providing a platform for improved decision-making and information-sharing information by educators and giving families access to previously unavailable information about learning outcomes in the schools attended by their children.

It is estimated that learning poverty25 in the MENA region will increase from 63 percent to 70 percent (intermediate scenario) as a result of the pandemic closures (against an SDG target of 30 percent by 2030).26 Restoring lost learning, and making progress toward the SDG target will require organization of remedial ‘catch-up’ classes. This presents a number of immediate governance challenges: upgrading EMIS to provide real-time data on learning achievement, recruiting and deploying sufficient teachers for the remedial classes, preparing additional teaching and learning materials, providing in-service training for teachers, engaging with parents to provide home-based support, and allocating sufficient budget resources. At the same time, education systems should be strengthening their resilience (including through technological advances) to prepare for future crises and to address inequalities in access and engagement.

The magnitude of the challenge means that governments will need to give schools the opportunity and the incentive to innovate. Changing approaches to teaching so that lessons are aligned with students’ levels and needs while raising teacher performance by (for example) providing sample scripted lesson plans and training teachers to use them, will be necessary to recover from the learning losses experienced during the pandemic. This is above all a governance challenge that, if addressed effectively, can be turned into an opportunity for long-term improvements in learning outcomes.

Governance in Centralized Contexts

Responsibility for education governance in most MENA countries is highly centralized. This is unlikely to change dramatically in a short- to medium-term perspective, but it does have consequences for student learning that need to be understood and mitigated to the extent possible. A study conducted in the context of PISA 2015 considered student learning outcomes in science when responsibilities for school governance were assigned to the school principal, to teachers, to a governing body, or to regional or national authorities. The conclusions were striking—when the principal was responsible for decisions around resources, curriculum, discipline, assessment and admission, student learning

23 Mann et al. (2020) based on 2018 PISA data. 24 Khan (2020). 25 Share of 10-year-olds unable to read. 26 World Bank (2022).

outcomes in science were much higher (see Figure 1 below). Roughly similar results were found when teachers were responsible for governance in the areas of curriculum, discipline and assessment. But when direct responsibility for these factors was removed from the school instructional team (principal or teachers), the drop in learning outcomes was dramatic. Learning outcomes were lowest when responsibility for decision-making around resources, curriculum discipline, assessment and admission was assigned to a national authority, as is the case in most MENA countries.

Figure 1. Correlations between the responsibilities for school governance and science performance

Results based on system-level analyses

Higher science performance

fficient with Correlation coe science performance

Lower science performance 0.6 School principal Teachers School governing board Local or regional education authority 0.4 0.2 0 -0.2 -0.4 -0.6 -0.8ResourcesCurriculum Disciplinary policiesAssessment policiesAdmissions policiesResourcesCurriculum Disciplinary policiesAssessment policiesAdmissions policiesResourcesCurriculum Disciplinary policiesAssessment policiesAdmissions policiesResourcesCurriculum Disciplinary policiesAssessment policiesAdmissions policiesResourcesCurriculum Disciplinary policiesAssessment policiesAdmissions policies

National education authority Students score lower in science when the school governing board holds more responsibility for admissions policies

Source: OECD, PISA 2015 Database.

Emerging Reform Initiatives

Yousef and others have argued that the MENA Region as a whole has made very little progress in improving governance over the past decade or so. Challenges include a notable lack of accountability mechanisms in most countries and proliferating conflicts. Some ambitious efforts at education governance reform in the region have foundered. Kuwait’s National Learning Standards Project, launched in 2010 with World Bank support, was largely abandoned after several years due in part to a lack of capacity on the part of educational institutions to manage the complex reform process.27 In Tunisia, in the aftermath of the revolution, a large number of NGOS have emerged within the education sector, advocating and working toward a wide range of education goals from good governance to inclusive education, but there has been little progress in strengthening decentralization or administrative decision-making processes.28

Yet there are also promising developments within the education sector that point to a renewed effort to improve education governance. A major reform of teacher management in Saudi Arabia, just underway, will adopt a decentralized approach, with a focus on team learning. A new school evaluation framework will establish for the first time clear national standards for schooling and procedures for external and self-evaluations of schools.29 Morocco has implemented a set of reforms including a transparent, competitive process for teacher recruitment that has already resulted in a significant upgrading of the qualifications of teacher candidates. World Bank support to Morocco also seeks to support performance contracts which will help regional and provincial entities set performance targets and improve service delivery.

27 Alhashem and Alhouti (2021). 28 della Ragione (2020). 29 OECD (2020).