Executive Magazine

Lebanese edtech startups carve a place alongside traditional teaching

by Lauren Holtmeier & Thomas Schellen August 6, 2019

written by Lauren Holtmeier & Thomas Schellen

Lebanese startups focusing on education technology (edtech) have tapped into the idea that as education changes, they have a role to play in preparing the next generation for the 21st century workplace. Educators seeking to prepare children for the jobs of the future, those that rely more on coding, robotics, AI, and programming—and depend less on traditional knowledge than an ability to think critically to solve new problems—can tap into these technologies and integrate them into their classroom teaching.

Investments in edtech are growing globally, and beyond the overarching education goal, Lebanon’s entrepreneurs see a potential market for these businesses here and in the region. In 2018, 1,087 edtech companies received funding globally, an increase from 813 in 2017, according to research from Metaari, an advanced learning technology research company. Of the six Lebanese edtech companies that Executive has profiled below, most expressed interest in expanding to other MENA markets, primarily those in Saudi Arabia, citing difficult economic times at home and better opportunities to grow their businesses abroad. Beyond better expansion opportunities in the Gulf states, Lebanon’s schools sometimes lack the technical infrastructure or cannot afford these solutions, making finding markets elsewhere not only lucrative for these startups, but in some cases necessary.

From personalized children’s books and programs that teach kids and teens coding and robotics to an adaptive learning platform, these edtechs have one thing in common, an understanding that for children to learn best, they must be engaged with the content. “Gamified learning” and “project-based learning” seemed to be recurring buzzwords during these interviews, as the people behind these platforms see these styles to be the most engaging because children are actively involved in, and invested in, solving a problem from start to finish. These companies seek to partner with schools to give teachers another tool to use in the classroom, though they have primarily sought to tap into private schools in Lebanon, as public schools rarely have the budgets or infrastructure for these products.

Synkers

Incorporating a proprietary mobile app as a platform for interaction, Synkers is an online marketplace for tutoring services that is mostly active in Lebanon, where about 70 percent of its tutors are based. Synkers has a secondary presence in the UAE and aspirations to roll out its services in Saudi Arabia in the near term. With roots in the founders’ personal experiences as actors on the supply and demand sides of tutoring while studying in Canada about 10 years ago, Synkers was accelerated from business idea to startup venture at Beirut accelerator Speed@BDD, from which it graduated in April 2016. Seed funding came from Lebanese venture capital firm Phoenician Funds in 2017 and growth of the startup ensued on basis of strong knowledge of the Lebanese education environment. The edtech startup also is working in education markets that provide higher profit margins than tutoring by organizing classes on specific topics, such as the SATs, and also plans to provide corporate training. Its business model for intermediation between sellers and seekers of tutoring and handling of related payments is built around the charging of commissions to the buyers of tutoring (at a gross rate of 20 percent as part of which overheads, tech developments, and taxes due from tutors are covered). The startup’s concept also has accents of the sharing economy and social enterprise aspirations for contributing to the improvement of the education opportunities. Social accents include a professed vision of broadening the reach of education by making it more affordable for students from poor backgrounds to obtain peer tutoring that will give them an improved chance to complete their education and avoid dropping out of school. However, Synkers is also already contemplating exit strategies via acquisition by one of the larger edtech players in Asia or the United States who might seek to enter the Middle Eastern tutoring market (estimated by Synkers on basis of market research to worth $3.1 billion).

Augmental

Some students are visual learners, some are auditory, and others are verbal or kinesthetic learners. With learning types this varied, the founders of Augmental, a digital learning platform, are trying to cater to an individual’s learning style. Students using the platform take an assessment that measures their skill level and learning style and an algorithm accordingly assigns material after the teacher has presented the lesson and introduced the concepts. For the teachers, there is a dashboard to monitor students. In Lebanon, Augmental is used by five schools, and Paul Barakat Diab, one of the founders, says that the team has interest from public schools in the UAE and Kuwait and is trying to penetrate Saudi markets. In Lebanon, there is currently content for STEM subjects for grades 5-9 as well as French and English. Content on the platform is made by content providers previously certified by the Ministry of Education and Higher Education or by teachers who can load their own content onto the platform. Each school subsequently has a coordinator to review the content and ensure it aligns with core competencies. For Augmental to function as intended, there are minimum infrastructure requirements a school must meet to qualify, such as a lab with enough tablets so that each student in a given class can use one. In Lebanon, because many schools—especially public schools—lack the appropriate resources, Barakat Diab says that Augmental’s future markets will mostly be outside the country. While teachers in Lebanon are aware of adaptive learning and are themselves searching for solutions, he admits the timing for such a product launch in Lebanon is not ideal because of the strained economic situation. To break even, a lot of factors must be considered he says. If they receive the requested funding, which will be used to pay increased marketing and sales efforts and the development of a marketplace for adaptive learning content, they will reach that mark in two years.

Spica Tech Academy

Spica Tech Academy teaches children and teens how to create their own video games through project-based learning, but perhaps more importantly for founder Reine Abbas, the program is teaching kids how to be creative, a skill she stresses is imperative. Even if children do not go on to be game developers, the skills they are learning—creativity, project management, critical thinking, coding, storytelling, and writing—will be important in nearly any future career, Abbas says. Spica Tech Academy started as a B2C platform where parents could enroll their children in week-long 20- or 30-hour coding camps, but has since evolved to include a B2B model where Spica Tech Academy instructors will teach a week-long course in schools. So far, they operate in four private schools in Lebanon and, depending on demand, Abbas says she would likely expand to 12 schools in Lebanon and is currently finalizing contracts with three schools in Dubai. The focus on project-based learning, an approach in which students work to complete a project over an extended period of time, stems from a need to have children work through a task from start to end, figuring out solutions along the way. With game creation, challenges have to be created and solutions must be invented, says Abbas, making it a good—and importantly fun—way to get children thinking critically. Teaching complex concepts like coding to children could be challenging, but scaling activities appropriately makes this possible. For younger children, visual programming languages are a way to grasp these concepts, but teenagers can create their own game from scratch using the C# language. At the advanced level, students use Unreal Engine. “We’re using the real software developers are using,” Abbas says. “So after the first course they can create their own game at home, and it’s open source software.” Beyond expanding to other regional and global markets, Abbas says the next step, currently underway, is a template that instructors can use to gamify their curriculum to follow Spica Tech Academy’s model.

Lululittle

The Arab culture is one of rich history and important discoveries, yet this is often bypassed as people delve into the West’s history, ignoring their own, says Joanna Khoury founder of lululittle, a personalized children’s book company. Khoury wanted to make Arab history accessible to youngsters in a way that puts the child at the heart of the story. “From the dawn of time, stories have been a tool to deliver a message,” Khoury says. Lululittle uses a print on demand technology based in the UK that ranges from £6 – £8 ($7.46 – $9.94 at time of writing) and book buyers can choose their avatar and insert the child’s name to be made into a soft or hardcover book printed in either French or English. Because the books are printed on demand, overhead printing costs are minimal. Lululittle has done a preliminary launch of an Arabic version, and the full launch will follow when it is fully automated, which Khoury hopes will be in the next few months. Where Khoury sees a gap in the number of quality Arabic childrens’s books, she says that getting the Arabic version automated will allow for children in the region to learn about their culture in their native tongue and will be a way for expats to bridge the gap to home. Lululittle’s primary market is the MENA region and GCC states in order to teach kids about their own culture; of the 700 books sold so far, most have been within the region. This has been achieved with very little marketing, Khoury says, and next steps include ramping up their marketing efforts within regional target market. Khoury says for Western audiences the books are a way to learn about Arab culture and they have sold a few books in these markets.

Nooreed

At age 16, deciding what to do for the rest of one’s life can feel overwhelming. Nour Jabra, founder of Nooreed, felt this herself and wanted to help teens identify careers to which they are well-suited. What started as a series of videos with professionals from various fields has evolved to include an assessment based on the Holland Code, which refers to American psychologist John Holland’s six personality types: realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional. Nooreed’s assessment is a simplified version, which Jabra says is an attempt to make it more accessible to teens and also to help eliminate any language barriers non-native English speakers may have. When a student registers, they take the assessment and are given a breakdown by percent of which careers best match their personality; they can then watch the related videos. In the six months since the assessment has launched, around 15,000 students have signed up. In Lebanon, the business model works as a sponsorship system where universities can sponsor Nooreed in return for advertising space on Nooreed’s website; students can access Nooreed regardless of whether their university has made a sponsorship agreement. Jabra says they are currently trying to break into the Saudi market by early 2020, and in that case the business model would shift to a subscription service that would be specific to Saudi Arabia, where a different economic situation means more schools will likely be able to pay. A dismal economy and shrinking school budgets have left little room for this type of service to work as a subscription service in Lebanon. “Lebanon isn’t a very healthy place to grow a business,” Jabra says. Other plans for expansion include partnering with study abroad agencies whereby Nooreed would refer students to a specific agency and receive a fee in return. While they are in talks with one such agency, no deals have been finalized at the time of writing.

Cherpa

A Lego factory in Hungary with no human workers on the factory floor—that is what Ibrahim Ezzeddine saw on a class trip while studying at the Lebanese American University (LAU). Ezzeddine and Basel Jalaleddine, former roommates at LAU, started thinking about how to prepare children for future job markets where robots could replace traditional human labor. Cherpa, the duo’s startup, teaches kids coding and robotics through a gamified system. Cherpa has worked with experts from NASA and Google to design educational content and also works with an educational specialist to create content tailored to student levels. Currently, there are five courses; the latest, on cyber security, launched in July. Ezzeddine said the decision to follow a B2B model was because the teacher’s presence ensures students can follow the content rather than get frustrated and walk away. Because it is a paid service where administrations buy a course for a specific number of students (e.g. one course for $399 for up to 20 students), it is easier for Cherpa to target uppper-end private Lebanese schools. A partnership with the education ministry will have Cherpa in five public schools on a one-year pilot program this year. Cherpa is currently in 18 schools in Lebanon and 1,600 students have completed at least one course, but Ezzeddine says the plan to expand beyond Lebanon, in which schools often lack the funds, necessary infrastructure, or internet connectivity. Cherpa has successfully entered one school in Saudi Arabia and has sold courses to one after-school educational center in Spain and one in Portugal. Future targets include penetrating the Gulf markets, primarily Saudi Arabia, where they are working with a business developer to test the market.

August 6, 2019 0 comments

Providers search for lucrative coding bootcamp models

by Lauren Holtmeier August 6, 2019

written by Lauren Holtmeier

If anything about the future can be claimed as certain, it is this: The jobs of the future will be different from those of today, and jobs across various sectors will more heavily rely on skills such as coding and programming. This shift has already begun, and Lebanese entrepreneurs, such as the founders of SE Factory, Codi, and Torch Academy, began looking to break into the coding bootcamp market about five years ago and educate fresh job market entrants.

Information on the size or value of the global coding bootcamp market is not readily available, but a quick scan of available camps shows, at least anecdotally, a fairly large number of these bootcamps emerging globally. One estimate from Technavio, a company that conducts market research, predicts that the global full-time coding bootcamp market will reach $331.96 million by 2021, an 11 percent growth over the five-year forecast period. The Investment and Development Authority for Lebanon (IDAL) reported in 2018 that the Lebanese ICT sector was a fast-growing sector, whose impact, whether direct or indirect, on GDP was expected to be $7 billion by 2025. Such expectations reinforce the notion that Lebanon’s knowledge economy and tech startup ecosystem are an apt destination for the funds provided under Circular 331 from Banque du Liban (BDL), Lebanon’s central bank. Even before this data was published, entrepreneurs had identified a need and began looking to fill that gap and hopefully turn a profit.

Learning how to code is not just for tech whizzes designing the latest hit app. Working Lebanese must be prepared and equipped to move into these jobs of the future, as more traditional sources of income are lost to technology. In 2018, PwC, a global consulting company, conducted a survey of 29 countries—of which only Turkey and Israel were surveyed in the Middle East—which estimated that 3 percent of jobs were at risk of automation by the early 2020s, increasing to 30 percent by the mid-2030s and putting 44 percent of low-educated workers at risk from losing their jobs to automation. A June 2019 Oxford Economics report found that up to 20 million manufacturing jobs—or about 8.5 percent of the global manufacturing workforce—could be replaced by robots by 2030. Since 2010, the report states that the number of robots in industry has more than doubled worldwide.

Finding the right skills

Lebanon is not immune to these pressures. Of the local labor force, 21 percent work in the industrial sector, according to IDAL, and the country hosts over 4,700 industrial firms—meaning the rise of automation and robots could impact the makeup of the Lebanese labor force. But with disruption comes opportunity, IDAL identifies gaming, e-health, adtech, software as a service, media streaming, and financial and e-payment solutions as key investment opportunities in Lebanon. Bottom line, with millions of jobs likely to be automated in the future, the living labor force must adapt to define and subsequently fill new roles.

In Lebanon, a 2017 skills forecasting study conducted by the national employment office in conjunction with UNESCO, the EU, and NET-MED Youth—a five-year project implemented by UNESCO and funded by the EU—identified close to a combined 13,000 jobs across the ICT sector, including systems analysts and various developers and programmers; while a 2016 UNDP labor needs assessment for the ICT sector estimated 2,000 new jobs would be created annually for new graduates. With around 800 ICT enterprises in Lebanon and approximately 2,000 university ICT graduates looking to join the workforce each year, these estimates would indicate that the sector is capable of absorbing these new graduates. However, this projected 15 percent job creation rate should be questioned with the country headed toward austere times and real GDP growth at just 0.2 percent in 2018. Even if these projections prove correct, there is still a gap in that degrees do not necessarily set students up for the workplace.

Fadi Bizri, founder of SE Factory, a coding bootcamp for recent graduates, says there is a skills mismatch, in that universities focus on theoretical knowledge and fail to instill in students the practical knowledge needed to succeed in the field. “If there’s a supply, and there’s a demand,” Bizri asked himself. “Why isn’t it working?” The UNDP report cited a lack of “blue sky thinking” in the current collective skillset, meaning the current labor force lacks the ability to think critically and creatively.

Bizri and his co-founder Zeina Saab recognized this knowledge gap, especially for graduates coming from what he describes as second-tier universities where receiving a high-quality education is hit or miss. SE Factory, which focuses on full-stack web development, is one of multiple endeavors, alongside Torch Academy and Codi, across Lebanon that aims to provide students with this practical technical knowledge while simultaneously boosting critical thinking, but it also teaches soft skills and has career services that include CV writing and mock interviews. All three of these programs target young adults and recent university graduates, and all claim a 90 percent job placement rate of their graduates.

Such endeavors have popped up over the last five years, and a few seem to be operating relatively healthily in their early stages. One that failed to do so though was the popular France-based Le Wagon program. Le Wagon has bootcamps in 35 cities globally, and a branch opened its doors in Lebanon in 2015, but closed after just two cycles. Malik el-Khoury, Lebanon’s Le Wagon founder, says this was for multiple reasons that included the price, the coding language taught, and the fact the teachers hired from the US and Europe were more expensive than local instructors.

The price tag for an intensive nine-week program was $4,500, and 80 percent of Le Wagon’s students came from abroad. Finding people who were willing to pay that high a price in Lebanon was difficult, and the number of Lebanese employers who use the language taught, Ruby on Rails, can be counted on one hand, Khoury says. Ruby on Rails is great for people who know little about coding, but is not exceedingly useful in a country that primarily uses PHP and Java, he says. When asked what model may be more sustainable in Lebanon, Khoury says he thinks something where students can go to school in the evenings and still be working during the day could prove more lucrative.

Finding the right model

Torch, which began in 2015 as well, is now beginning to shift to this “short course” model in which students attend classes three evenings a week and choose to learn IOS, Android, or web development, with a focus on building practical skills. Traditionally, students enrolled in a 14-week full-time program for $1,200, and while they have trained more than 350 students and have three or four courses a year, Inaam Hassoun, program coordinator at Torch, says that they are struggling to attract interest in this intensive program in which they would need 10 to 15 students to run a cycle. Hassoun believes this is because most recent graduates do not have the necessary funds and are focused on getting a job to use their recently obtained degree.

SE Factory, on the other hand, have stuck with the 14-week, full-time model since incorporation in 2016, operating three cycles annually with around 20 students in each cohort, but where they are targeting recent graduates with some background in computer science from the middle and lower socioeconomic classes, they charge just $100 for the course. In the beginning, this was achievable through grants and heavy fundraising, and now SE Factory charges a success fee for students and companies. For students, once they land a job, one month’s salary is owed that can be paid over three to 18 months. For companies, if they hire a graduate and are satisfied, SE Factory receives 1.5 times a month’s salary once the employee makes it past the probation period. Bizri, one of SE Factory’s co-founders, says that currently they have about 60 companies in their network, including employers outside Lebanon. Regarding growing SE Factory, he says that while they are on a path to sustainability, they still rely on some grants, and they have recently raised money to open two new bootcamps, one in the north and one in the south, but the exact locations are yet to be determined.

Where SE Factory charges an, albeit very affordable, fee for their services, Codi, a similar program that targets marginalized youth, including low-income Lebanese as well as Syrian and Palestinian refugees, who must be at least 17 years old to enroll in the program, offers six-month classes for free, relying heavily on fundraising from corporate or individual donors. In operation since 2017, they tend to target members of the Lebanese diaspora for funds through cooperation with the Lebanese International Finance Executives (LIFE), a group that works to link Lebanese finance executives abroad back to their roots.

still in demand

Joseph Atallah, director and head of operations at Codi says that they receive their physical operating space for free and only pay for utilities, helping lower operating costs. Beyond having tuition-free courses for the near 30 students each cycle, Codi partners with Al-Majmoua, a nonprofit microfinance organization, to provide microloans of $2,000 spread over the six months to students who need financial assistance. Graduates must begin paying back the loan within four to six months of graduation, assuming they find employment; if not, Codi covers the costs.

With these four programs all emerging within a two-year window of the others, and three left standing—and where at least one, Torch, has expressed trouble attracting new students for their full-time coding bootcamp—the question arises: Has the market reached saturation? Torch’s Hassoun says she thinks it is a possibility, but SE Factory’s Bizri disagrees. With only a handful in Lebanon, and with those in operation targeting different markets (marginalized youth, lower income youth, and middle to upper class), he argues it is doubtful that the market has reached saturation. Regardless of these programs’ presence, the jobs they seek to prepare their students for will continue to emerge rather rapidly over the coming decades, and demand for skilled workers will not dwindle. In turn, the demand for coding bootcamps—unless Lebanese universities drastically alter their curriculum to ply their students with more hands-on experience—is not likely to decline.

However, prospective students’ demand for full-time coding bootcamps, for the time being, seems to be contingent on pricing. Of course, many other factors that may affect demand could be at play, such as preference for programming language, skills taught, or offerings on teaching soft skills, but where these offerings seem to be similar across the board, price varies dramatically. Le Wagon’s failure was in part due to the Ruby on Rails programming language offered, despite it being a full-stack program, but the other three offer full-stack training on commonly used coding languages. If students have a preference for learning a certain language, this could affect the landscape as well. The experiences of Le Wagon and Torch in struggling to attract people for their relatively pricey full-time courses compared with SE Factory and Codi’s relative ease in identifying students indicates that there is at least a partial link with affordability in a country that is undergoing an economic crisis. How coding bootcamps adapt and continue to fare in stormy economic times will require identifying a model that is affordable for recent graduates that teaches the right content, or, like Torch, adapts by shifting to a model where those in the labor force already can earn a living during the day and learn in the evenings.

August 6, 2019 0 comments

Education Special education Special Report

Lebanon’s education system is failing students with special needs

by Charlie Darwich-Houssami August 5, 2019

written by Charlie Darwich-Houssami

Students with physical and cognitive disabilities in Lebanon are being put at a disadvantage by a system that, from the get-go, creates barriers—both physical and financial—toward an inclusive education. While there are signs that this could change in the future, current progress is slow, and on a structural level, the educational system in Lebanon continues to exclude and discriminate against special needs students.

In 2000, Lebanon passed Law 220 that, among other things, guaranteed disabled individuals the right for an education free from discrimination, as well as equal opportunities within private and public educational institutions. Yet, in the near two decades since the law was passed, an implementation decree has not been developed or agreed on by relevant ministries. Human Rights Watch (HRW) carried out research between January and June 2017, in Beirut and its suburbs, Hermel, Akkar, Nabatieh, and Chouf districts, gathering information about the experiences of 105 children and young adults with disabilities, and conducting interviews with six public schools, five private educational centers, 13 Ministry of Social Affairs (MoSA)-funded institutions, 30 disability and education rights experts and advocates, and 13 government officials. Based on interviews with disabled children and their families, HRW concluded that, “children with disabilities were excluded from public schools due to discriminatory admission policies, lack of reasonable accommodations, a shortage of sufficiently trained staff, lack of inclusive curricula (including no individualized education programs), and discriminatory fees and expenses that further marginalize children with disabilities from poor families.”

Barriers to education

The first barrier children with disabilities face is direct discrimation, i.e., being denied admission into school as a result of their disability. HRW recorded 200 instances of this during its investigation. One of the cases detailed in the HRW report was that of Wael, a 10-year-old boy with autism who, according to his mother, was denied admission into 10 schools in the Beirut area with reasons given, including, “We don’t take handicap [sic],” and “We cannot accept your son because the other parents might not approve.”

Others were able to enroll their children, only for the school to then ask them to remove them later. Zahraa, a five-year-old girl from Hermel with a cognitive disability attended public school for a month before her mother received a phone call from the school’s principal who, according to the HRW report, informed her that “Zahraa had to leave because, ‘[the teachers] cannot leave all the other children and just take care of her.’”

Due to the lack of data on the overall number of children with disabilities in Lebanon, it is impossible to give a scale to this problem. By the World Bank’s estimate, worldwide at least 5 percent of children aged between one and 14 have a disability; using that metric, HRW estimates that, on the conservative side, there could be around 45,000 disabled children in Lebanon. However, the government agency charged with registering people with disabilities have just 8,558 children on file—perhaps due to the fact that Lebanon does not consider some conditions—such as high-functioning autism, misophonia, and pathological demand avoidance—as disabilities.

The second barrier to inclusive education is financial, both on the side of schools and of parents. To be accessible to children with a wide range of disabilities, schools need to make buildings physically accessible, have teachers trained in special needs education provision, and supply specialized equipment, such as braille books and hearing aids. According to Aya Majzoub, Lebanon and Bahrain researcher at HRW, both public and private schools lack materials, tools, and systems that enable children with disabilities to learn, such as sign language interpreters. In cases where schools do have these materials, they are often provided by an NGO. Given the lack of funding—made worse by this year’s budget—there is a real shortage of trained special needs staff. When HRW carried out its investigation in 2017, it found that in nearly all cases, teachers and school administrators had no training on inclusive education methods or ways to incorporate kids with disabilities into the classroom and make sure they were receiving the needed support.

On the parents’ side, if they can enroll their children into schools, they are often required to pay extra fees. LWIS Hazmieh is a school focused on inclusivity for students with special educational needs. Shukri Husni, chairperson of LWIS’ education committee, emphasizes to Executive the importance of an integrated approach at his school, where students with and without special needs learn in similar environments with adjustments made to accommodate the former. LWIS includes one special needs student per class, with each class averaging six – 10 students. In addition to regular school fees, students with special educational needs pay an extra of $5,000 – $8,000 per year, depending on the student’s needs. According to Husni, this is cheaper than in comparison to most private schools, which would require these students to pay double the regular school fees.

A third barrier to a quality education for physically disabled students is the lack of accessibility in these educational institutions. A 2013 UNESCO report concluded that only five public schools in Lebanon met accessibility requirements for those with physical disabilities, such as having a wheelchair accessible entrance, ramps, elevators, disabled parking, and wheelchair accessible bathrooms.

For students who do manage to enroll in schooling, and whose families can afford the added costs imposed on them, there is an additional barrier to face: the lack of accommodation in the Lebanese national curriculum for special needs students. It is up to the schools themselves to adapt the curriculum to suit specific needs. Even in schools with accommodating internal systems, this results in being forced to teach a curriculum that is unfairly difficult for special needs students. “It is especially difficult for learners with special education needs who follow the Lebanese program to thrive and get an equal opportunity as their peers,” Husni explains. “To move forward, a major shift in the educational system at the national level is needed. If this does not happen, then many learners with special education needs will not make it past 9th grade.”

Integrate, not segregate

One way around these issues is for children with special needs to be sent instead to specialized segregated institutions funded by MoSA, which are designed to serve as educational alternatives. However, these centers came under heavy criticism in the HRW investigation; one disability expert described most of these institutions to HRW as “day care centers—nothing more.”

In the draft budget sent to Parliament, funding cuts will make it hard to prioritize inclusion over segregation. The draft budget called for the Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MoEHE) to cut their funding for equipping primary and secondary schools with technical and other equipment for people with disabilities by $138,000, down 30 percent from 2018. At the time of writing, the budget had been passed by Parliament but was not yet signed by President Aoun, so Executive was not able to confirm if these cuts remained the same.

Hope for the future?

While the current capacity of schools for special needs students in Lebanon is severely lacking, there are positive signals for the future. The MoEHE ran a pilot program last year, which provided 30 public schools in Lebanon with full-time, specially-trained teachers, and made these schools physically accessible to children with physical disabilities. It also included a mobile teams of paraprofessionals (speech therapist, psychomotor therapist, and psychologist), which was deployed to provide support when necessary. According to the ministry, one outcome of this project, in particular the awareness sessions they have run at schools, has been the “shift from resistance to inclusion towards acceptance and readiness to support” from staff, students, and parents. Over 100 newly-built schools were built disabled-friendly, with a plan to build 25 – 30 more over the next five years. Another 170 schools (including the 30 in the above project) have been rennovated to include disabled-access. The MoEHE is also working on a new curriculum that “will take into consideration students with special needs.”

Several universities in Lebanon, meanwhile, have taken the step of including training on inclusivity as part of their courses for soon-to-be educators. Anies al-Hroub, coordinator of the special education program at the American University of Beirut, tells Executive that the university offers a diploma specifically designed to teach its students how to cope with the special education needs and learning disabilities of their future students. The diploma covers all aspects of special education, including behavioral modification, teaching both theory and practice. Hroub also notes that the number of students taking this path has increased recently, which he attributes to a professional demand for special needs educators and growing interest in such courses, even among students not pursuing a degree in education.

Despite these steps, it is clear that special needs students in Lebanon continue to face social, financial, and physical barriers to education. Changing this is important, as investment into special education leads to positive spillovers, through job creation and increasing the opportunity for children with special needs to reach their full potential as adults. All in all, greater efforts should be made to promote an inclusive education system for all children in Lebanon.

August 5, 2019 1 comment

Comment Education Special Report

Behind the Lebanese University strikes

by Kanj Hamade August 5, 2019

written by Kanj Hamade

My father returned to Lebanon in 1994, 10 years after the civil war forcibly exiled him to France. He thought that his PhD from Sorbonne University, coupled with extensive academic publications, would be sufficient for him to find a decent teaching job at the Lebanese University (LU). He soon realized the error in his assumption when he was told that due to his past political affiliations, “only Ghazi Kanaan or Nabih Berri can get you in.” It was only in 2008, after 14 years of teaching under contractual working hours, that he eventually got a full-time position. My father’s case, however, is not an exception. A five to seven year wait for a full-time contract is the standard period; others have even waited for as long as 15 years.

The full-time employment of contractual professors and the tenure position for full-time professors was one of the demands of the spring strikes. However, this has been a recurring demand that, since the early 1990s, has led to yearly sporadic strikes and long-term sustained strikes. The fragmentation of faculty between contractual (paid per hour), full-time (paid monthly based on yearly automatically renewable contracts), and tenure track professors (open-ended contracts) reflects the system of dependency and control that the Lebanese political class has imposed on LU’s professors since the end of the post-civil war period in the 1990s.

Political pressures

This system, based on political affiliations and sectarian balance, has come to determine people’s job stability, academic achievements, research grants, and access to managerial and academic responsibilities. It has subsequently created, in the Marxist sense, a dynamic of alienation, i.e. a loss of essence and self because of the stratification imposed by the political class, and its constant and continuous loyalty checks at each step of the way. Certainly, as an institution, LU is constantly occupied by protests and demands related to the status of university professors, who are new and highly-qualified while job and income insecure.

The Lebanese political ruling class puts the university under constant pressure through the control and alienation of its faculty and through the fragmentation of the university’s regional branches. Beyond the idea to open branches in major cities (e.g., Tripoli, Saida, and Zahle), the regional branching extended starting in the early 2000s to a long list of towns that do not facilitate the mix of students from different backgrounds, such as Baalbek, Rashaya, Aley, and Nabatieh. This policy has put extreme pressure on the university’s budget and, by doing so, has reduced the quality of education and the student life experience.

A key element of the strike was the focus on the importance of keeping the university budget, and potentially increasing it to further allow advancement of research and improvement. It was clear for the leaders of the spring strikes that further budget cuts meant the end of LU and the subsequent privatization of higher education in Lebanon.

Shaking the establishment

Another demand, which strikers were set on, related to the privileges provided to LU’s professors through their mutual fund, namely better health coverage than other state employees, as well as tax-exempted higher education funding for professors’ children ranging from LL5 million ($3,333) – LL10 million ($6,666) per year, depending on the age of the child. By my own estimate, payment from the fund can range from 10 percent of the yearly salary for professors with one child in kindergarten, to 40 percent of the total salary for professors with three children enrolled at university level. The issue of the mutual funds also raises questions about the overall health and education policies of the Lebanese government that aim at unifying all health and education payments for state employees, as per reforms detailed under Law 46 (2017) on salary scales. A sound policy reform should ensure universal health coverage and improvement of public school, but these remain far away from the policy agenda. University professors are incentivized to remain mainly to ensure a proper education for their children because of the mutual fund’s education subsidy.

While the 2019 spring strike put forward a long list of demands, the main political constraints that hamper the development of LU and the improvement of its program and infrastructure remain issues related to the control of the ruling class over faculty, the fragmentation of the university branches and its pressure on the budget, and the system of incentives proposed to the professors. This system is typical of the Lebanese administration’s approach that provides indirect subsidies to the private sector of what should be essential rights, such as health and education, while trying to reduce long-term pension indemnity costs that are calculated based on basic salaries. (By reducing basic salaries and increasing extra benefits—such as daily transportation stipends or school payments, for example—a package can seem acceptable to an employee in the short term, but with pensions only calculated on basic salaries, this will have negative consequences for them in the long term.)

The 2019 spring strike is different from previous strikes because it directly tackled the key issue that constitutes the backbone of LU—the political ruling class. By shaking the establishment, the leaders of the strike have been able to force Parliament and the government to amend the budget law, and meet all the demands made of them—with the exception of an additional five years of pension, and full-time posts for contract teachers (making it highly probable these professors will strike again early in the next academic year). More importantly, by refusing to follow political parties calls and instructions to stop the strike, protesters have inspired hundreds of professors out of their alienation for the first time since the end of the civil war.

August 5, 2019 0 comments

Comment Education Special Report

Academia, the public, and policy-making in Lebanon

by Rayan el-Amine August 5, 2019

written by Rayan el-Amine

There has never been a better time to critically assess how and where we get our news and information than these times when social media has become the main source of news for many, and “fake news” not only informs policy-making, but has become a tool for some politicians. Healthy democracies require informed citizens capable of critical thinking, an engaged civil society positioned to propose solutions and influence policy-makers, and universities committed to the transformation of society. Academia is an often overlooked prerequisite for democratic and informed policy-making through its education and research functions as well as its role as a site for public discourse.

Bridging the gap between policy-makers and academia is not easy, especially in the Arab world. The spaces for interaction are limited, and the policy-making process is rarely systematic. Even when policy-makers and academics do interact, they might find out they do not even speak the same language. A 2018 study by the Lebanese Center for Policy Studies on Lebanese parliamentarians found that 63 percent of MPs could not accurately estimate the unemployment rate, and while socioeconomic concerns were priorities for the majority of citizens polled, only 30 percent of MPs shared these concerns. Academics, on the other hand, can be too theoretical in their studies and too “long-winded” when addressing these issues.

Resolving this disconnect does not remove all of the barriers to formulating good policies, but it can go a long way toward envisioning longer-term solutions to everyday problems. At the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs (IFI) we have focused on: providing a space for policy-related dialogue between academics, civil society, and policy-makers; supporting and facilitating high-quality policy research by professors; and, most importantly, disseminating academic policy-relevant research as accessible publications with clear recommendations.

In highly politicized countries like Lebanon, there is limited public space for a healthy, non-partisan, well-informed debate.

The reality in the Arab world, however, is that almost 80 percent of Arab nationals are on social media, and around 70 percent report that social media is an important source of news. The internet and social media have made it easy to publish and reach thousands of people at the click of a button. Access to information through the internet has been both liberating and disorienting due to the sheer volume available. Often, it is hard to know the legitimacy of the information unless one is willing to dig deeper and research the source. In this context, distorted and biased information, sometimes referred to as “fake news,” can be easily instrumentalized by politicians and pundits through powerful tools of social media at times leading to a highly misinformed society.

The nefarious use of “fake news” for political campaigns has been on the increase worldwide. Of particular concern is its use by populist parties that depend on scapegoating immigrants and refugees for their societies’ problems. The use of false or fabricated information to rally a xenophobic political “base” is not history, but an ongoing 21st century blight on developed, liberal democracies across the globe. Here in Lebanon, there is a politicized narrative around refugees that is not very different from Western anti-immigrant discourse by right wing and populist parties in the US or Europe. At IFI, we seek to counter inaccurate information used by politicians and media through a social media campaign that uses everyday language and data visualisation to disseminate facts about the Syrian refugee crisis.

In highly politicized countries like Lebanon, there is limited public space for a healthy non-partisan, well-informed debate on the critical issues of the day. It is difficult to find a non-partisan and independent space for the exchange of ideas, but it is even more difficult to have the convening power to bring all the concerned parties together. Building credible institutions, whether academic or civic, to engage in the policy-making process is of paramount importance. Henry Giroux, a leading public intellectual on the societal obligations of educational institutions, argues that, “A democracy cannot exist without informed citizens and public spheres and educational apparatuses that uphold standards of truth, honesty, evidence, facts and justice.” Many in this region do not live in a democracy, but these are certainly principles that educators and researchers can and should strive to uphold.

August 5, 2019 0 comments

Comment Education Special Report

LAU study a model for solving the problem of data scarcity

by Diane Nauffal August 5, 2019

written by Diane Nauffal

The impacts of universities on the surrounding environment go far beyond their gates. Their contribution to the local economy—understood as both direct and indirect effects on employment and overall economic development—is visible to the naked eye. Classic examples include Oxford, England, or Cambridge, Massachusetts, which are unthinkable without Oxford and Harvard universities. In Lebanon, the neighborhoods of Hamra and Jbeil teem with students and faculty from some of the country’s most prominent universities.

As a university whose history and mission are directly linked to contributing to the development of its communities, the Lebanese American University (LAU) undertook an economic study to assess its own impact on the local economy. One of the first challenges to address this question quickly surfaced, given the scarcity of significant data and quantitative information to capture the typically complex relationships between investments/expenditures and national economic impact. Because of this data scarcity, the study used an input–output model that permits the use of gross domestic product (GDP) deflators to portray the economy of years following a year for which a complete national accounts data set is possible. Using commonly available administrative data, the model not only allows for the calculation of monetary multipliers, but also employment multipliers that play a major role in the educational sector.

The total economic impact of LAU on the Lebanese economy is greater than the total of the university’s direct spending on payroll, goods and services, construction, renovation, and capital expenditure. It is comprised of direct, indirect, and induced impacts. The indirect impacts are the jobs, salaries, and sales generated by the businesses’ spending that LAU directly purchases its goods and services from. Subsequently, the jobs, salaries, and other spending of the successive levels of recipient businesses evidence this indirect impact. Induced impact is also demonstrated by the jobs, salaries, and sales supported by employee household spending.

The indirect and induced effect—or alternatively, the multiplier effect—is measured by what is known as Leontieff’s input–output economic model, which uses a series of multipliers to provide estimates of the number of times each dollar of input, or direct spending, cycles through the economy with regard to indirect and induced output, or additional spending.

Using the IMPLAN model, the study analyzed 2015 data from the Beirut and Byblos campuses and demonstrated that LAU’s total economic impact accounted for the creation of 9,570 employment opportunities, $209 million in labor income, and $897 million in total economic output; the total economic impact of LAU on the Lebanese economy equated to 1.8 percent of Lebanon’s GDP for that year.

Aggregated within LAU’s total economic impact is the university’s out-of-country spending. Lebanon has long been a destination for higher education, attracting students from beyond its borders through its reputation for high-quality education provision. In 2015, approximately 11 percent of the LAU student population originated from outside of Lebanon. Their expenditures within Lebanon are included in this analysis, as they would potentially have attended other institutions outside the country.

Beyond the direct economic impact, the study touched lightly on the broader range of secondary economic impacts that highlight a university’s role in enhancing human capital, fostering technological innovation, and promoting business creation in Lebanon. Even without the secondary economic effects, the examination of the impact of one university, in this case LAU, reveals the importance universities bring to the local economy and serves to underscore their critical role in developing the human capital in our country.

This was an unprecedented study in Lebanon, and the lack of general economic data was the motivation for which it was conducted. A satisfactory and generalizable solution to the dilemma of lack of data, in the simultaneous context of a wide range of unanswered questions that would rely on such quantitative information, has yet to be discovered. This study suggests one way out of the dilemma: the application of models that allow for a combination of broad macroeconomic data from national accounts, which is generally available even in countries with poor data provision (and in Lebanon’s case can be accessed online), and microeconomic data, from institutions with data collection and statistical documentation standards, implementation of which is required by law from all private institutions of higher education in Lebanon. Internationally-oriented universities, multinational companies, and stock market listed companies, subject to the reporting requirements of the securities markets where they are listed (in Lebanon, the Beirut Stock Exchange and soon the new Electronic Trading Platform), serve as such institutions. The combination of these two available data sources in the context of severe data scarcity, with models that allow them to be combined, allow for unprecedented conclusions in much needed areas.

August 5, 2019 0 comments

Education Management Special Report

Private schools in Lebanon struggle to provide quality education at a reasonable cost

by Nabila Rahhal August 5, 2019

written by Nabila Rahhal

This year marked the 200th anniversary of the death of al-Muallem or the master Butrus al-Bustani, a writer and scholar, who founded one of the first schools in Lebanon, Al-Madrassa al-Wataniya (the national school) in 1880. The school was based on national principles and was open to all without discrimination—a change from the religiously run schools that were the only option prior.

Before Bustani’s school—and the others which were established in buildings around the same time—schooling was common place in Lebanon, albeit under oak trees. Madrasset tahet el-sindayneh—literally translated as “the school under the oak tree,” in reference to the school grounds under the shade of a tree in the town square—were informal schools for the village’s children taught by the priest or sheikh for all ages at the same time. Topics of instruction were reading, writing, and math, and students were deemed “graduates” when they mastered those three subjects. Of course, then, as now, there was a distinction in education along class lines; the children of the village’s notable figures were not educated under the oak tree, but through private tutors.

Regardless of their income level, Lebanese have historically valued education, seeing it as an investment in their children’s future. However, the cost of this investment is becoming increasingly restrictive given the dismal economic situation of the country.

Executive talked to the administrators of a selection of private schools in Lebanon—largely catering to mid- and low-income students—to see how they are managing to maintain this balance between providing a quality education that meets the demands of the 21st century, and keeping their tuition within an affordable range for parents.

A numbers game

Education is perceived as a noble mission where ideally money should not be an obstacle or barrier to accessing quality schooling, but the reality is that private schools in Lebanon have costs and expenses they need to meet, and can, to an extent, end up operating like any business. According to Mohamad Hamadeh, director of the Philanthropic Islamic Amlieh Association—a non-profit that owns and operates five schools in Beirut—Law 515 (1996) obliges private schools in Lebanon to split their budget between paying teachers’ salaries, operational expenses, and curriculum development, with 65 percent locked in for the former and 35 percent left for the latter two. Based on that division and on the number of students they have, schools then calculate their tuition fees.

Nabil Rahhal (the author’s father), an educational consultant and former board member of Marjoyoun National College, explains that, in Lebanon, teachers begin at a base salary and every two years are granted an increase to this salary. The value of this pay rise (known as darajeh [step] in Arabic) is dependent on their degree and years of experience. This means that a school’s expenses are constantly increasing and accordingly, says Rahhal, schools’ tuition fees are normally increased annually by a single digit percentage.

However, Lebanon’s declining economic conditions have rendered parents unable to afford these increasing tuition fees. “The educational sector is not isolated from the rest of the country and is hit by the economic situation of the country,” Rahhal says.

A law of its own

According to Father Boutros Azar, secretary general of the General Secretariat of Catholic Schools and coordinator of the Association of Private Educational Institutions in Lebanon, schools in Lebanon had been suffering from the country’s economic situation for a long time, but the straw that broke the camel’s back was the passing of Law 46 (2017), which increased salary scales for public sector workers. The controversial law, which was protested heavily by school administrations, but also much fought for by teachers and public sector workers—who had not seen a significant wage increase since 1997—has three components. The first was an increase in the monetary value of the pay rise that teachers earn automatically every two years (from an average of LL35,000 to LL50,000). The second was adjusting and raising the wages and salary scale, so starting salaries increased. Those two components roughly amounted to a 40 percent increase for each teacher, according to Shukri Husni, chairperson of the board and director general of the Learner’s World International Schools (LWIS), which operates four schools across Lebanon. Both these components were implemented by all private schools, says Azar, despite the financial strains they inflicted.

The law also stipulated that all teachers get six additional pay increases at once, in a one-off move (the equivalent of 12 years of pay increases). For example, a teacher who has been teaching for six years has had three increases in her salary, but will be given the additional six, amounting to a salary jump of around LL300,000.

This situation placed private schools in a classic catch 22. “Here schools are faced with a dilemma,” Rahhal explains. “They need to increase their tuition fee to pay the increased teachers’ salaries, but if they increase their tuition drastically, parents will no longer be able to afford putting their children in that school, and so the number of students will decrease—negatively impacting the school’s budget and its ability to pay salaries.”

For those schools run by religious bodies—around 70 percent of the schools in Lebanon—Azar says that none were able to grant their teachers the one-off increase, not because they did not believe teachers were deserving of it, but because they simply could not afford to increase their tuition fees any further. “Teachers should surely be recognized for the noble job they do educating our children, but there has to be a balance,” Azar says, stressing on the feasibility of the salary hike. “We have always said that we are [in agreement] with a balanced [between the financial abilities of parents to pay and the financial needs of teachers to have a living wage], feasible, and fair salary scale.”

Private schools that cater to low-middle- to middle-income households were also largely unable to finance the additional increases and were open with their teachers regarding the situation. “In our lower fees schools, we paid the new scale—which is a 40 percent increase—but could not pay the additional six increases, which would have given them another 30 percent increase,” says Husni. “If such schools pay the six increases, it will mean that school fees will be significantly raised, which may cause such schools to eventually close. Most teachers do understand this difficult situation.” Rahhal points out, however, that oftentimes teachers reluctantly accepted not receiving the one-off increase fearing that the alternative would be school closures and losing their jobs.

School closures

Despite most private schools that cater to low-middle- to middle-income households not providing their teachers with this one-off payment, they are still struggling financially under the current economic situation—some have even been forced to close. Since 2012, when Azar was appointed to his post, Catholic schools have lost 85,000 students from their previous total of 190,000 students. Since applying—some of—Law 46 in 2017, 20 Catholic schools have shut down, bringing the overall total of Catholic schools down to 330 (Catholic schools constitute 5 percent of the schools in Lebanon).

Amlieh’s Hamadeh says the 65/35 percent ratio no longer makes sense as teachers’ salaries are taking up the majority of the budget, leaving much less than 35 percent to cover the bare necessities, such as maintenance of school grounds. “We are in a state of constant deficit, where we have no less than LL1 billion in deficit annually, and it is adding up,” Hamadeh says.

Closing down a school, says Azar, is never an easy decision as it leaves teachers jobless and students struggling to find alternative schooling options or dropping out of the education system all together—something that nobody wants.

– We surveyed schools that taught at all levels, from nursery until Grade 13, and had more than 250 students in total.
– To gather information on tuition fees, we attempted to call all eligible schools in each area. Some did not answer the phone. Others told us they could not share this information over the phone—insisting that we visit the school in person—or that they were not qualified to give such “sensitive” information to us.
– The resulting statistics in the map are based on those schools that provided us with information.

Education in tough times

Adding to the financial woes that private schools that cater to families of mid- to low-income brackets are facing is that a lot of parents delay paying the tuition, or do not pay it in full. “There is a problem for certain, but obviously it differs from area to area and school to school. The more expensive the school is, the less of a problem it has,” LWIS’ Husni says. “This is because the 2 percent of the Lebanese who have money still have money. The people who are losing it are the middle, upper-middle, and lower-middle [classes].” He observes that their least expensive school has the highest rate of unpaid tuition fees—close to 25 percent of parents have not paid the tuition fees yet—while their most expensive school has the least amount of unpaid fees at less than 5 percent.

It seems that the further away from Greater Beirut, the bigger the impact of the economic situation on schools. Azar says that out of all the schools under his directorate, the ones that are struggling the most are those in rural areas with a small number of students.

Persevering despite it all

In light of these conditions, schools have had to go the extra mile to make their money. When it comes to unpaid tuitions, Husni says they have several options to manage these losses, short of asking a child to leave the school—an act which he finds inhumane. He has a designated team that is in constant contact with parents who have not paid, supporting them in finding options to pay what they owe, and even allowing them to make payment installments through credit cards—although the school pays 2 percent on each transaction. “We are finding mini ways to deal with a situation that is unresolvable in the foreseen future,” Husni says.

Schools have also learned to go beyond the tuition fees to finance the education they are providing. Hamadeh explains that the Amlieh Organization owns the building that houses the Ministry of Finance and it rents it out to the ministry, thereby securing revenues that help their schools finance part of their salary expenses.

Financial aid can be a way of paying for tuition when schools have the resources to run such initiatives; this typically involves reaching out to alumni and/or the community, according to Rahhal. In the LWIS school network, 12 percent of students in school are on financial aid, the money for which is collected from the four owners themselves—who have each pledged a certain amount in financial aid—and from the schools’ fundraising efforts, says Husni. He also acknowledges that his schools benefit from an economy of scale, with one school sometimes subsidizing the other, and from the money LWIS makes from educational consultancy work outside of Lebanon. “This allows us to have more of an ability to bear losses, but it is more of a cushion than a solution,” Husni explains. “If we did not have this [security], we may have had to consider the closure of the schools with lower tuition in a couple of years, I think.”

Azar says the Maronite church supports Catholic schools by not collecting rent from the schools that are on church-owned land, says Azar. Because rent is a major expense for schools, then through this cost cut, Catholic schools can still manage to keep tuition fees reasonable while paying salaries.

Given these conditions, as Husni puts it, “schools have a mentality of survival not development.” One has to wonder how much these schools are able to invest in a curriculum or infrastructure that would prepare learners for the 21st century. “When you are barely able to pay salaries, how can you develop your academic and physical infrastructure?” Rahhal says. “This is why such schools are teaching students just to pass the official exams. Schools boast that their students have all passed the official exams, but this is not an indication that they have succeeded in developing a well-rounded personality equipped with the skills needed for the digital future.”

Education these days has developed way beyond the chalkboard and textbook approach to include critical thinking and research skills, coding and smart boards, and a plethora of tools and concepts aimed at producing a well-balanced individual who will excel in jobs and fields not yet known to us. Meanwhile, a big portion of schools in Lebanon are struggling just to pay their teachers and remain in operation. Unfortunately, the price will be paid by those students who do not have access to the same quality of education their wealthier fellow citizens can afford.

August 5, 2019 0 comments

Education Overview Special Report

The Lebanese educational landscape

by Thomas Schellen August 5, 2019

written by Thomas Schellen

Despite large variances in concepts of what constitutes a good education and the curious inconsistency which individuals tend over time to exhibit on the matter, the value of education as a public good is constant throughout history and across societies as diverse as classical Greece, imperial China, and contemporary America. In our global era of universal human standards, education is affirmed in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations and has become elevated from a lofty but vaporous ideal to a target of nations.

But that declaration of promise for every society was 22 years ago. Although progress toward achievement of the SDGs and the predecessor Millennium Development Goals is being achieved and measured, the quest for quality education is still fraught with question marks.

In the context of globalized capitalism since the late 20th century, it has, for example, become a growing trend to glance over or ignore the development of personal values, social competency, and self-confidence that is coherent with an individual’s role in a sane society. But even if one only focuses on the “easier” target of getting a useful education in the sense of its economic utility, the world today, including Lebanon, is faced with growing problems about achieving an education with adequate economic benefits, let alone adopting new targets of education as necessitated by social and technical changes, such as the digital transition.

The financial barrier to accessing quality education applies universally to private households.

In Lebanon, these problems are exacerbated by one particular barrier, educational financing. This barrier to accessing a quality education applies universally to private households, whether they are seeking to enroll their children in primary and secondary school, or are moving them into tertiary education, of which Lebanon has an impressive number with large variances in reputations and tuition costs.

Stratification into different tuition and quality categories across Lebanon’s regions frequently begins with pre-school and extends through the educational system, where 70 percent of costs are covered privately by Lebanese families. The top tier of tertiary education in Lebanon generally is perceived as consisting of private universities based in Beirut, such as the American University of Beirut (AUB) and the Lebanese American University (LAU) on the English side, and Université Saint-Joseph (USJ) and École supérieure des affaires (ESA) on the French side. According to the available statistics, about one quarter of the country’s 120,000 students in a given cycle attend one of these pricey universities, as contrasted to about 37 percent that attend the public Lebanese University—an institution that is perennially battling a set of political and administrative challenges. The balance of 38 percent of students in tertiary education are distributed over the fragmented landscape of around 35 privately owned institutions of medium- to medium-high reputation (and commensurate tuition fees), which are legally not-for-profit enterprises and mostly opened in the 1990s and after.

Hisham and Ali

Irrespective of the specific institution and education level, it is easy to get testimonies from parents on the financial challenges. Hisham and Ali are two 40-something fathers. Ali owns a taxi. Hisham owns a hair salon. Both men are retired from the Lebanese Armed Forces, and both belong culturally and economically to the Lebanese middle class—which today means, primarily, that each of them passionately laments how the leaders in the nation’s political theater cannot be trusted.

In further parallels, both their families include two working parents and children in education and both struggle financially. Ali, who has two kids aged five and 12, is clear on his next major expenses: $2,800 of school tuition for his younger and $3,200 for his older child. “My wife is working full-time. I bought this license and taxi company to be able to give our income an extra push so that I can pay [for] school,” he says, adding with exasperation: “All that I work for is to pay for schooling. It is the same with me as for so many people in Lebanon.”

Hisham is looking at a new level of tuition stress; two of his children will soon enroll in a highly reputed university that will cost around $16,000 of tuition for the year starting this fall, and jump to $33,000 of tuition for both his children one year from now. “I have talked with the bank, and they will give a loan that covers about 30 or 35 percent of total tuition. But how can I pay tens of thousands of dollars each year? I have put a ‘for-sale’ sign on my house,” he exclaims, while the flat screen TV in his hair salon shows live pictures from the budget debate in Parliament. Hisham turns up the volume. Just now, two MPs are haranguing over who should talk for how long.

The two faces of Lebanese education

As it is with practically all public goods in Lebanon, except for security, the allocation of public funding to education is rather low in international comparison when expressed as a share of GDP. Described in a 2017 education public expenditure review (PER) of Lebanon by the World Bank Group, the government expenditure in the first half of the 2010s was equal to 2.45 percent of estimated GDP and 6.4 percent of all expenditure. According to the researchers, total government expenditure on education was about $1.2 billion annually and slightly below out-of-pocket annual education expenditure of private households of estimated $1.3 billion. Bank loans and structured savings instruments for building up education reserves are available from banks and insurances, but not used extensively in the country (see box below).

When private allocations of funding in Lebanon are taken into the equation, the country’s total expenditure on education reaches a comparable level to what in many other nations is managed under paradigms of progressive taxation, transfer payments to weaker income groups, and public administration.

Moreover, the share of education in total government expenditures has fluctuated rather extensively. By World Bank data collections, public expenditure on education—consisting of government spending on public and private education institutions, education administration, as well as subsidies for households and other private entities—reached 8.58 percent of all government expenditure in 2013, but in previous years had vacillated between 5.5 percent in 2009 and 2010, less than 6 percent in 11, and a bit over 7 percent in 2016. And the fiscal commitments to education are not encouraging. “While government expenditure in absolute terms has gone up since 2005, the percentage share of education expenditure as a percentage of total expenditure has decreased by 17 points during the last decade,” the PER noted.

The deeper one looks, the greater the disequilibrium between public investment in education and private households’ burden of education expenditures appears. Additionally, whereas investment in education in Lebanon has “high returns” according to the World Bank—when comparing the income levels of people with a university degree against those of less-educated individuals—the opportunity cost, speed, and degree of certainty of labor market returns on investments in tertiary education in the domestic economy of Lebanon are factors of significant concern that are not mentioned in the report. These factors include the high unemployment of labor market entrants, and a high likelihood of university graduates will have to accept jobs that are socially, skill-wise, and geographically distant from their area of study.

Furthermore, the overall level of entry-level remunerations in Lebanon’s difficult economy is at increasing disparity to the growing cost of education. Kim Issa, director of advancement and alumni relations at the International College (IC) in Beirut, teaches undergraduate students at LAU in their final year before graduation. In Issa’s experience, students predominantly have no illusions about what salaries they can ask for if they enter the domestic labor market. If fresh graduates receive salaries of $1,000, or even $8,000 from the more desirable local employers—a reasonable expectation based on the career options offered by major Lebanese banks—the existing dichotomy between domestic salary prospects and education costs at top universities is not abating.

Ample anecdotal evidence from the current student cohorts, therefore, point strongly to the long-standing propensity of bright young Lebanese with top education accomplishments to search for careers almost anywhere else in the world, because the home market has no viable offers for them.

*The quality education at these private schools comes at prices that exceed average private school tuitions up to four times. At IC (pictured) the average elementary school tuition is $11,464 per year.*

Thus overall, the aggregate investment that private households in Lebanon make in their education seems to stand in direct inverse relation to the investment made by the public sector and, in an economic sense, to the domestic return on education investments. In this sense, the lack of information on the education sector’s current and expected contributions to the economy and total factor productivity is just the beginning of the opacity on what education means for the GDP of Lebanon.

Assessing the return potentials of education investments in the Lebanese context is made additionally difficult by the extreme long-term character of education investments, and the vagaries of having to make these investment decisions at a time when the aspirations of young students are immensely lacking visibility on the side of sustainable personal occupational inclinations, and on the side of future market demands for their expensive skills and the assessment of how much the education sector contributes to the country’s total factor productivity and GDP.

Even more opaque is the potential of the Lebanese education system when approached under the question if the system will be able to fuel the human capital formation in Lebanon in the near- to medium-term to a similar extent as in the past 50 years, when brains were widely perceived (by the Lebanese and by Arab and other alert employers outside of the country) as the single exportable and internationally most competitive asset. A hint on the questionability of this potential already by existing metrics comes from a barely average standing of Lebanon in the World Bank’s new human capital index.

Placing bets on Lebanese virtues

In Lebanon, there is a definite suggestion that wealth inequality contributes to differences in educational attainment, and also a view that such gaps are not shrinking. With regard to the former issue, the World Bank’s PER highlighted the gap in education attainment between students coming from high-income households and low-income households as very high. The PER said, “Significant wealth inequality exists in the performance of students,” and added “inaccessibility of private schools to the poorest implies that private schools are hindering equity rather than promoting it.”

Having to agree fundamentally with the analysis that top private schools are not doing enough to promote equity of education in Lebanon, IC’s Issa, nonetheless points to pull-on effects that highly reputed private schools can bring to the education landscape by positively interacting with underprivileged schools. Top schools, which have a survival need to provide prime education methods to their clients, according to Issa, can convey ideas and methodologies such as professional fundraising from their successful alumni to financially less fortunate schools, just as underprivileged schools can be inspired to emulate new methods introduced in top schools such as creation of leadership centers and progressive teacher evaluations.

In Lebanon, there is a definite suggestion that wealth inequality contributes to differences in educational attainment.

Another field where Lebanon’s education providers can open new ways are related to adoption of future-oriented pedagogical tools and courses. There is a new draft law in this regard that in some minor Lebanese miracle was sponsored by MPs and drafted with a preamble that highlights how important tech education today is for development of the global economy. The draft substantially proposes, to noteworthy detail, adding to the national curriculum lectures that cover subjects such as online ethics, robotics, programming, and artificial intelligence. There are furthermore practical examples from several years of coding programs that give good indications of what works in Lebanon in this regard and noteworthy edtech startups, several of which profess to more than just their next venture-capital raising and economic growth targets.

In the unlikely event that reform of Lebanon’s public sector thinking would result in a marked shift from the current reliance on more or less clandestine savings and tax avoidance of the upper-third of income earners, with the implied need for out-of-pocket finance of health, education, and retirement by these relatively affluent families to the detriment of those who cannot accrue such savings and who would, in a more redistributive system, be net beneficiaries of financial transfer payments, Lebanon could shift to more active functioning of public administration units in managing education.

The skills, passion, and vision needed for such a radical transformation are in existence, and the required processes are not impossible to fathom for the performance leaders in the Ministry of Education and Higher Education. However, the odds for such a transformation of the Lebanese political DNA seems today nearly as low as the chances for a kid from a one-room village school in the extreme south of Lebanon to receive a scholarship at a top private school with US affiliations.

The remoteness of a quick change in the public management of the Lebanese education sector under the existing political paradigms is demonstrated by the issue of special education needs. It is as depressing as it is instructive. As MoEHE clarified upon request by Executive, the Law 220 (2000) has not been adequately empowered through issuance of the requisite implementation decrees. Implementation decrees are still outstanding as they need to be “developed and agreed upon by several ministries including the Ministry of Social Affairs, Ministry of Health, Ministry of Internal Affairs, and Ministry of Labor,” MoEHE said.

The skills, passion, and vision needed for such a radical transformation are in existence.

The ministry explained that implementation of education for children with special needs is being pursued in terms of construction or upgrades of school buildings with disabled-accessible infrastructures, in terms of academics, teacher and staff employment, as well as education planning.

Under the circumstances, the most feasible option of the education system in Lebanon and all aspiring students and parents might be to trust in the national heritage of education as a springboard to the future and reignite or further develop informal, perhaps even wasta-driven linkages that allow underprivileged schools to emulate or inherit some of the advancements that the institutions at the top of the performance ladders in primary, secondary, and tertiary education have adopted.

As the PER also notes, Lebanon’s education sector was able to cope much better than the country’s habitual internal naysayers and external critics might have expected (resilience in dealing with the refugee crises of the last seven years is another parallel between the public goods of health and education, besides their under-provisioning with fiscal resources).

The latest reference for the changing story of education is digital. This is the biggest education game changer for the generations that have journeyed through the second half of the 20th century and into the current era—it is possibly even the biggest game changer in the history of education. As Issa says it, “If you do not invest, you will be falling behind, and in the age of digitalization you can become outdated very fast.”

August 5, 2019 0 comments

Leaders Opinion

Lebanon’s budget: One hurdle is passed, many more remain to be overcome

by Executive Editors August 5, 2019

written by Executive Editors

Three months is not a long time, depending on one’s perspective. If you are a rock that has had Mediterranean waves washing up against you for the last 11,000 years, three months are almost nothing. A blink. On the other hand, if you are a silk moth eager to feast on mulberry leaves, three months is more than you can expect to live under any circumstances. And if you are an annual budget, three months are 25 percent of your shelf life.

For the Lebanese political process, it was a sort of qualified success to see the 2019 budget move over the course of three months through three stages of its life cycle. Beginning with intense cabinet deliberations throughout May, the draft budget endured scrutiny by Parliament’s finance and budget committee in June. It then underwent a purported final metamorphosis into a veritable law in the second half of July, albeit with extremely assiduous expenditure of hot air over three days of debate on the floor of Parliament with voting on the fourth day and achievement of a solid majority of almost 65 percent of votes.

The success of the budget process at the end of July must nonetheless be seen as limited or even very limited. This is not only because the 2019 process was late in commencing. What raises the bigger questions is that firstly, the process was kidnapped time and again by competing practitioners of political brinkmanship. Cabinet leaders, stakeholders, and members of Parliament all underperformed in emitting signals of real and traceable reforms. Secondly, the political class failed to send signals of their will to make meaningful sacrifices, such as forgoing part of their own wealth for the sake of the country.

Most of what is known about the budget’s removal of privileges from holders of political offices is a rectification of non-productive privileges that should never have existed in the first place, such as the right of MPs and highest officials to import a, however luxurious or showy, car per year and not pay customs excise tax for it. In contrast to sending convincing signals of personal sacrifice as role models that citizens can emulate, the members of the supposedly reform-eager Lebanese cabinet and Parliament have, judging by conversations on the streets of Beirut and squares of outlying villages, excelled only in increasing the Lebanese people’s already ample levels of doubts about political sincerity among MPs, their disaffection with the leaders of political parties, and the outright deep systemic distrust that most Lebanese people express, sometimes explosively, when you ask them about their government.

What comes next?

As such, budget-making was far from immune to the self-interests of political dons and their influence blocs in cabinet and Parliament; the budget that was voted on in Parliament on July 19, moreover, remained questionable as to its actual capacity to bring achievements for fiscal health and more than questionable as far as the budget’s projected net fiscal benefits when juxtaposed with its real economic impacts on enterprises in fragile Lebanon. On top of that, even three months proved not enough time to arrive at a law that could be published in the Official Gazette by the end of July. That was the moment when the sudden, and perhaps not even the last, strange twist in the tale came in the form of the revelation that disputed formulations in one article in the 2019 budget, article 80 containing a provision about specific ranking civil servants and their hiring, was holding up President Aoun’s signature.

The resulting pupa of a budget is filled with a body of law of which no one can be sure if it will emerge as a nocturnal moth that just sucks money and is as scary as many in the business community perceive it, or take flight as a butterfly whose scintillating flutter lures investors into committing funds to Lebanon’s flowery bouquet of infrastructure, public-private partnerships, Capital Investment Plan, and Lebanese Economic Vision propositions.

Another looming question is even if the budget law will be able to fly; in the most adverse speculation, it might be too heavy to lift off the ground or yet be annihilated by some unforeseen factor. Even if it flies like a butterfly and produces some numerical results of revenue enhancements and cost reductions—albeit no one can predict which ones—and turns out to be the most prolific of all of history’s budgetary butterflies in the art of seducing multilateral lenders with the Lebanese scintillation under the CEDRE plan, all that such success will hatch with certainty is an increased national debt.

That running up debts is anything but risk-free and increases a debtor country’s dependency on the goodwill of multilateral agencies, such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is self-explanatory, but this truth was also made specifically clear last month. Running on this track, there were the various structural reform recommendations by the IMF in its July 2 Staff Concluding Statement of the Article IV Mission. These were recommendations that were on one side formulated as a long list of “authorities should” statements down to detailed and very precise demands, for example that reforms should include “incorporating Council for Development and Reconstruction (CDR) spending in the budget and passing a public procurement law.”

Then there were the fiscal recommendations. Calling it “critically important for debt sustainability,” the IMF advised Lebanon in no uncertain terms to implement a fiscal plan “based on credible and permanent measures” able to yield a substantial primary surplus over the medium term. The hints that followed were not subtle. Increase VAT. Stop tax exemptions of diesel and increase fuel excises. Make the temporary interest tax hike into a permanent one. Improve tax collection.

These measures make perfect economic, and in case of proper tax collection, social sense, if the latter is linked to progressive taxation and comes with transfers to the poor but avoids creating poverty traps and barriers to seeking employment. But measures such as the ones so strongly proposed by the IMF that it feels like an imposition and intrusion into the political realm—tilting it further away from democratic processes where social and economic goods should be negotiated inside a polity—can only remind of the fact that the economic thinking of the IMF has no companion of social wisdom. This realization has forced itself upon clearheaded observers time and again in the interventions that the IMF has historically dictated and imposed on states in need of bailouts.

Funnily enough in this context, the IMF, at the end of July, launched its search for its next managing director (and successor of departing Christine Lagarde) with the top two requirements stipulating a “distinguished record in economic policy making” and an “outstanding professional background” with proven managerial and diplomatic skills. Terms like social competency or social policy-making do not feature in the job description.

In Lebanon’s case, where there is no request to have a bailout program under IMF tutelage, the fund should restrain itself from prescribing any fiscal measures that would come with crippling impacts on far too many families and entire regions whose social realities no IMF delegation has diligently explored. The social needs of the Lebanese polity with its many fragmentations and insular communities are something no international assessment has ever fully comprehended, let alone addressed.

Need for credible signals

It is a different matter if central bankers consult with the IMF and ask them for monetary and financial advice, which the IMF has expertly delivered, including repeated acknowledgements of the economically counterintuitive, but in Lebanon’s case prudent, dollar peg of the Lebanese lira (the 2019 Article IV statement says nothing about floating the lira, but offers instead reassuring sentences such as “The BdL has been the linchpin of financial stability and the guardian of the peg”).

This runs up to the conclusion that the only reasonable way fiscal recipes would conceivably be near-imposed on Lebanon’s politicians by an institution like the IMF is that the Lebanese political class has failed to do two core jobs, the first being the job of sending signals that the citizenry sees positively and that generate a demonstrable level of mutual confidence between government and people of Lebanon. Moreover, the political class, despite all the efforts invested into the 2019 budget creation process, has secondly not delivered a law nor formula that emits trustworthy structural reform signals.

Executive, therefore, calls for the political class of Lebanon to start understanding the people and their social conditions, to send credible signals of personal sacrifices and commitment to the country’s public goods, and to legislate socioeconomically sustainable policies—not waiting until the increasing indebtedness and global financialization of the country gives the voting blocs of multilateral institutions, investors, and financial market players control over the social affairs of the Lebanese.

Furthermore, our law and policy-makers need to exponentially increase their efforts to understand the interdependency between structural reforms and economic rebirth. Our political class would need to start sending convincing messages showing that Lebanon’s power groups can forget their adolescent fantasies of omnipotence, control their jealousies of their co-religionist peers in the next village, and actually get their hands clean by doing constructive legislative work and implementing reforms.

Just like cultivation of the humble silkworm enabled enterprising people in hillside villages to spin silken threads into a pillar of economic prosperity in the period during which the Lebanese polity was still a pupa enclosed by the Ottoman Empire, the 2019 budget still could, in a very unlikely, but almost ideal, scenario of structural reforms and reconstruction of trust, give birth to a reality of political sanity, administrative efficiency, and more sustainable economic prosperity in Lebanon.

August 5, 2019 0 comments

Leaders Opinion

The Lebanese government needs to do more to improve the education sector

by Executive Editors August 2, 2019

written by Executive Editors

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world,” so said Nelson Mandela in a 2003 speech. Indeed, the impact of quality education—the kind that expands the learner’s mind and aids in the development of a well-rounded personality—resonates long after the optimal 18 – 20 years of formal education (15 years of school, followed by at least three years of tertiary education for some). This form of education would make one much more competitive in the job market—and more likely to perform well and grow in a chosen career path—ultimately benefiting the economy. An educated mind can also develop innovative solutions for social or environmental problems plaguing the country or launch businesses that would benefit the country as a whole.

Lebanese families have traditionally valued education, seeing it as an investment into their children’s future. Of Lebanon’s students, 70 percent go to private schools, which are perceived to be of better quality than public schools, yet they can vary significantly in price and quality. It is sad then that high-quality schools in Lebanon are becoming increasingly inaccessible to the majority of Lebanese who simply cannot afford them. We all remember the story of George Zreik, who died earlier this year after setting himself on fire in protest over being unable to afford tuition at his child’s private school. Increasingly higher tuition rates, coupled with a dire economic situation and a higher cost of living, are making quality private schools an impossible dream for more and more parents. Meanwhile, private schools that cater to mid- to low-income families are themselves struggling under the toll of paying teachers’ salaries, which were finally increased by Law 46 (2017). Oftentimes this comes at the expense of curriculum development and school enhancement. Quality education in Lebanon is, therefore, becoming increasingly segregated between the wealthy—who can afford to pay the tuition fees in the top-tier private schools or universities—and the middle- to low-income families. Those families constitute the majority of the population in Lebanon, and unfortunately their children are largely not receiving the kind of education needed to equip them with skills needed for the jobs of the future.

It is infuriating that despite the proven value of quality education and its impact on the economy—and despite the bleak state of the education sector in Lebanon these days—the Lebanese government still prefers to invest in bricks and mortar, meaning infrastructure, rather than investing in the development of its own people. Prime Minister Hariri’s big win prior to the 2018 elections was to secure pledges for $11 billion in loans and grants at the April CEDRE investment conference—and since then the focus has been on how to implement the fiscal reforms needed to unlock these loans so that urgently needed Capital Investiment Plan (CIP) projects can be tackled. But what is the share of education projects in the CIP list? None. Why is education not a priority for this government? Education is a sector that will have a higher return on investment in the long-term and create more jobs than any infrastructure project.

It is high time that the government takes education more seriously and prioritizes it. We realize that this is a vast sector, with many challenges and aspects in need of reform or restructuring. But the simple act of recognizing education’s significance for the future of Lebanon and dedicating the energy and mental power needed toward the betterment of the education system—and toward making it accessible for all Lebanese children—is a start.

This translates into finding members of Parliament who are more engaged with education; those sitting on Parliament’s education committee need to be appointed less because of their political affiliations and power interests. They should be selected based on their knowledge of the subject matter and their dedication toward the improvement of the Lebanese school system. The head of the committee should be open to discussing the proposals and initiatives they are working on instead of refusing to give interviews to any media outlet (which is what Executive was told when we approached Bahia Hariri’s office for an interview).

We realize that money is tight, but the government needs to allocate more of the fiscal budget toward making quality education accessible to all Lebanese (we stress on quality education because while public schools are free in Lebanon, their quality, based on the limited resources they have, is questionable). The way in which they do that has to be relentlessly discussed and debated in the educational committee meetings and in parliament sessions. It has to be made a national priority.

There have been certain steps in the right direction—such as the introduction of computer science classes in the middle school classes (or cycle 3) of 553 of the 875 public schools in Lebanon, according to the Center for Educational Research and Development—and they are to be applauded. But they also need to be built upon if the goal is the overhauling of the education system.

If our government truly stands behind quality 21st century education as a basic right for all of its citizens, not a privilege for the wealthy few, and demonstrates its seriousness toward working to achieve that, then we as a country will be reaping the positive results for years to come.

August 2, 2019 0 comments