Long a regional leader in education, Tunisia is planning a number of new initiatives that will help tie classroom learning to marketable skills. International partnerships, particularly with France, as well as increased access to information technology and the opening of private universities, are part of the plan to capitalize on Tunisia’s most valuable natural resource — its people.
During French Education Minister Xavier Darcos’s two-day working visit in mid-February, he announced a bilateral agreement to boost technical, technological and vocational training as well as mutual authentication and recognition of degrees. The agreement will also promote teacher exchanges and the pairing of French and Tunisian academies and regions, with an affiliation between the Academy of Besançon and the Nabeul Regional Education and Training Department leading the way. The French academies of Creteil, Nantes, Nice, Lille and Bordeaux have also expressed interest in starting co-operation programs with Tunisian institutions.
First day of class
The same day the institutions in Besançon and Nabeul concluded their agreement, the University of Paris-Dauphine announced the opening of a branch in Tunis, with classes starting this year. The university will offer courses in economics, management and law, and will open masters and professional classes in the first year, with plans to expand to all levels of licensing and standards — in line with European standards for bachelor, master and doctorate degrees — in September 2010.
France is Tunisia’s most active educational partner, but other European countries have announced plans to launch programs as well. Luxembourg’s Minister of National Education and Vocational Training, Mady Delvaux-Stehres, led a delegation to Tunisia in January and inaugurated, along with Tunisian Education and Training Minister Hatem Ben Salem, the newly renovated and refitted Radès technical school.
Not to be left out of the flurry of activity in the first two months of the year, Britain signed a memorandum of understanding in mid-January to launch ‘English for the Future’, an eight-year program that will introduce new English language materials and course books for primary and secondary education. Employment is again the primary focus of the program, with stronger vocational language abilities expected to increase job opportunities for young people.
The IMF has projected the unemployment rate to be 13.8 percent in 2009 and an increasing number of university graduates are seeking jobs. In 2007, 19 percent of university graduates were unemployed, while the rate is predicted to rise to 25 percent by 2011. The new international partnerships will bolster domestic efforts to develop practical, job-oriented programs, most notably through increased access to ICT and the development of private, specialized universities.
Tunisia ranks second in the arab world and first in africa for the quality of its education system
Technology for education
The government hopes to equip primary and secondary schools as well as universities with a computer in every classroom, with plans to have 80,000 computers for 70,000 classes by 2009, up from 22,000 computers for 81,000 classes in 2004. ICT is also being integrated into curricula, not only for engineering courses but also for language and cultural lessons and as a way to prepare graduates for the job market.
Although the private sector cannot yet claim to compete with the public system — which offers quality education for free — private universities are becoming increasingly common. Such schools offer a means to relieve crowding in the state system, while they are also able to respond with more flexibility to a modernizing job market.
Private institutions offer courses in areas such as business, communication technology and tourism, and they generally integrate one-year work experience into their curricula. They also have partnerships with foreign establishments, such as ESPRIT’s relationships with the French universities École Internationale des Sciences du Traitement de l’Information (EISTI), Télécom Lille and the École National Supérieure des Mines (ENSM) in Saint Etienne, as well as the Mediterranean School of Business’s (MSB) partnerships with the US-based University of Maryland School of Business and Canada’s University of Waterloo. These international collaborations have increased recognition for Tunisian universities and added further value to their diplomas, with some partners even issuing a double diploma, as in the case of the École Supérieure des Communications de Tunis and Télécom ParisTech.
These programs will help Tunisia modernize its already strong education sector. Indeed, the country commits a substantial amount of funding to education, with the Ministry of Education and Training’s 2009 draft budget set at $1.97 billion, up from $1.7 billion in 2008. According to the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) 2008-2009 Global Competitiveness Report, Tunisia ranks second in the Arab world and first in Africa for the quality of its educational system, while coming in 17th place worldwide. The planned expansion of ICT availability will strengthen its existing network, which is ranked 34th in the world in terms of Internet access in schools, according to the WEF report.
Although the country’s education indicators are strong, the persistently high unemployment rate suggests that more can be done to harness the potential of recent graduates. The new initiatives are a good place to start.
