Education first?

On Monday morning, April 19, hundreds of Lebanese educators, academics and policy makers took their seats in the UNESCO Palace auditorium to listen to a series of presentations on what the ministry of education and higher education (MEHE) billed as a preliminary framework for a national education strategy, the final version of which will be released in October. Unfortunately, for many in the room, the topic, as well as the specifics of what was discussed seemed all too familiar. Indeed, some skeptics of the ministry’s latest efforts say that the real test will be whether the relatively new administration of Samir Jisr will go beyond the work of his various predecessors to actually implement some badly needed reforms – many of which have been on the table since the mid 1990s. Moreover, several experts, including members of the government itself, wonder whether all the new efforts are being adequately coordinated