The process of reforms initiated by the government during the last 20 years has lead to a quantitative change in the educational system in Tunisia. After having succeeded at raising the attendance rate, the country must now take on the challenge of modernizing and improving the quality of its educational system. Free schooling and the recent reforms have resulted in an attendance rate of 99% for children aged 6 and a literacy rate of 94.3% for ages 15 to 24, according to figures released by the Ministry of Education. Such figures are impressive in comparison to most other states in the MENA region. Nevertheless, the education budget has created a solvency problem due to the demand and heavy burden on public finances, claiming nearly a third of the state’s general budget, or 7.5% of the country’s GDP. The increasing number of students, which should reach some 500,000 by 2009, will
