Lebanon: Access to Education

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” - Nelson Mandela

Lebanon strongly believes in the importance of education as the sole trigger to a productive and cooperative future community. As a result, it has not ceased over the ages to allocate to education the gravity it deserves. Even after the end of Civil War that caused great destruction and devastation, the Lebanese educational system emerged intact. Taking into consideration the aforementioned, it has always been one of Lebanon’s top priorities to make education a granted right rather than a far-fetched privilege. It has thus taken several actions to make education available regardless of economic standard, gender, ethnicity, and disabilities.

Considering the high costs of providing a suitable educational environment, it has become harder for people with lower economic standards to afford the expenses. However, Lebanon has made sure that economic norms do not hinder the path of education. The Lebanese government has assumed a policy of ensuring a free education to all citizens enabling the latter to complete at the very least the nine years of compulsory education set by the 1998 Law Number 686. This is executed through the 89 registered Lebanese public schools insofar. In order to be able to provide students of public schools with an educational experience more or less equivalent to that in private schools, public schools have been rehabilitated with science and technology labs in the summer of 2011. As well, in cooperation with the UNESCO, public school teachers are being trained and extra-curricular activities are being integrated into the public school system. Despite that, students in private schools in Lebanon still remain advantaged with a higher quality of education, a higher standard of technological and scientific support mechanism, and a wider range of more developed extracurricular activities, accounting for the 67.6% enrollment in private schools in 2007.

Lebanon’s educational system set by the government includes informatics, sports, and arts in addition to at least two languages, literary subjects, and scientific subjects in order to keep students well-rounded at all levels. Extra- curricular activities, though more dominant in private schools, include but are not limited to science and art fairs that help develop students’ scientific and artistic minds respectively, Model United Nations that helps develop students’ leadership skills, INJAZ that helps develop students’ business skills, Face to Faith that helps develop students’ morality and faith, and drama that helps develop students’ artistic abilities.

On another note, gender has no longer been a discriminatory aspect in Lebanon’s recent history when it comes to education. This is due to the Lebanese Law that renders man and woman equal in educational opportunities and due to the numerous non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that, aided by the government, have fought for this cause. The results are clear through the latest MDG report statistics depicting an around 50-50 gender ratio of enrollment in Lebanese schools in 2010. Females are attributed equal education and higher education opportunities to males.

At the ethnicity level, Lebanon has always been known for inter-cultural population consisting of ranging religions and political views. Though Religion as a subject is implemented in many semi-private schools’ and private schools’ educational program, it has never been an impediment in the way of equal access to education for people of all religions of the Lebanese community. However, with the increasing number of refugees, namely Palestinian and Syrian, educational services have not been able to properly

accommodate to the whole groups. As a result, many Palestinians and Syrians in refugee camps have lacked a proper education. Despite that, Lebanon has not remained idle. Though not covering up for the full need, the Lebanese Ministry of Education and Higher Education has absorbed nearly 45,000 refugees into the public school system. Complimentarily, local NGOs such as Beyond and Sawa, with the full support of the Lebanese government and in collaboration with UNICEF, have been proceeding with informal education schemes to assist the refugees that, mainly due to logistical difficulties, were not integrated into public schools.

Plausibly, the most significant progress Lebanon has been able to make concerning access to education is at the level of children with disabilities. Laws 220 and 686 state that disabled children have every right to an education and the Lebanese government has taken it upon itself to provide that education to the disabled, spending an average of $1762 on each disabled child in organizations in the year 2003. The even more considerable credit goes to the NGOs that have made education for the disabled possible. In fact, they have taken responsibility of the education of the physically disabled as in the Institut de Reeducation Audio – Phonetique (IRAP) for the deaf, the Youth Association of the Blind for the blind, and the Lebanese Physically Handicapped Union for the otherwise physically handicapped, among others. They have also accommodated for the education of the mentally handicapped as in the Lebanese Down Syndrome Union and Sesobel to name a couple. Students with learning disabilities have also been provided adaptable educational programs via institutions like SKILD Center for Smart Kids with Individual Learning Differences. Then again, students with special needs are not incorporated in regular public and private schools, which remains the main issue where students with special needs are concerned.

At the level of higher education, the Lebanese University provides high-quality education and facilities in various fields to all citizens. Acceptance into the university is regardless of social, economic, or religious standards. A roundabout of 80000 students is enrolled in this public university of very minimal fee. The Lebanese University is one of the 39 higher education institutions in Lebanon. These establishments include universities, faculties of religious studies, and institutes and faculties of technical education, providing a wide range of fields for all students.

With a 97.1% net enrolment in 2007, access to education has been ensured to the wide majority of Lebanese students. Nonetheless, the remaining minority who has no access to education prevails mainly due to the fact that poor farming families in rural areas see in a child a worker rather than a student and that educational facilities are not common in rural regions. Consequently, it is important that the Lebanese government spread awareness about the importance of education for a healthy future and that it develop suitable educational institutions in all regions of Lebanon equally.