Sa’eed Abdu Moqbil wins Al-Afif prize [Archives:2006/953/Local News]
On June 6, the Al-Afif Cultural Foundation revealed the name of the winner of this year's prize. Researcher Sa'eed Abdu Moqbil was awarded Al-Afif prize for his work entitled “Public Education in the Republic of Yemen: Reality and Prospects of Development.”
Ahmed Jabir Afif, president of Al-Afif Cultural Foundation, presented the prize, consisting of YR 300,000, a recognition certificate, and the Al-Afif Medal, at the headquarters of the foundation in Sana'a.
The study that won the prize is a 132 page long paper comprised of nine chapters: the general framework of the study; an introductory approach to Yemen's education; philosophy and aims; curricula; preparation and training of teachers; school management; school facilities; financing education; and prospects of development.
The research was motivated by the fact that “there is [sic] a serious decline in the performance level of the [education] system in general,” as stated by the National Strategy for Developing Basic Education.
Many indicators attest to this fact: a diminishing number of students passing their general certificates; an increasing number in failed students and those who have opted out of the school system; poor educational output; more and more parents complaining that their children finish the basic education program without being able to read and write; and poor English skills despite six years of courses.
In the introduction to his study, Moqbil quoted the Asian edition of the Wall Street Journal as saying in its Asian economic survey for 1997-1998, “The long-term struggle for economic success is going to be more in the classroom than in the stock market.”
Moqbil conducted adequate research to put this fact into a Yemeni perspective.
Moqbil concluded that the most important external factors that influence Yemen's public education are: the economic crisis; overpopulation; social and political meddling within schools; poor integration among education strategies; fragmentation of the education system as oversight is placed under the discretion of three ministries (the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Higher Education, and the Ministry of Technical Education and Vocational Training); and illiteracy.
The internal factors are divided into two groups: general factors and pivotal factors. The first category includes such factors as inadequate integration among the education's subsystems, insufficient input, inadequate working hours at schools, the large number of temporarily closed schools, the relatively small number of girls schools, and insufficient continuous training of educational staff.
Pivotal factors are those related to the preparation of educational laws, which have not consulted independent research. Lastly, the overall aims of education are poorly related to an educational philosophy.
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