Education governance has become an urgent necessity to solve all issues related to it, such as the decline in its general level, the poor practices of those in charge of it, the weakness of its outputs, the deviation of all its indicators, and the undermining of its competencies.
Education governance, in short, is a model for managing education policy-making based on coordinated procedures, to involve stakeholders and stakeholders in education from the public and private sectors at all levels, to set goals and then implementation, follow-up, review, and finally accountability. Accordingly, the essence of governance is evident, which is to enhance interaction and participation between relevant stakeholders (in charge of education and higher education) while improving the link between them to ensure transparency, coherence, effectiveness, and efficiency of education policies and systems in the country.
Rather, the task of improving governance so that the educational system can improve its performance independently and periodically, without standing on a good or bad new minister or agent, has become widely recognized and practiced in the countries of the world, as a starting point for what has come to be called good governance, that is, ensuring management. effective resources and public problems, and always respond to the vital needs of society.
A rational diagnosis from His Highness Prime Minister Sheikh Sabah Al-Khaled of our current situation, and a good and responsible initiative to recognize the poor educational situation in the country, according to which His Highness included the inevitability of correcting its crookedness and trying to remedy it, among the list of challenges that the government will face in the coming days.
When looking at the situation of our ministry and the attempts of its leaders to reform education, we find that they distance themselves from working on the integrated aspects of the education process, and focus on separate aspects (such as reforming curricula, introducing a new set of specializations, or even creating departments or centers to develop education and control its quality). On a small group of issues that are not related to its inputs to its outputs, it has often been proven that it is difficult to achieve tangible improvements through this approach. On the contrary, the educational system often remains of low status in the hearts of its employees and beneficiaries.
Accordingly, it is logical now to launch a set of decentralization initiatives by the honorable Council of Ministers, at a very early stage, to expand the circle of vertical and horizontal dialogue, while reducing the reluctance of the leadership of the various sectors of the ministry to share the decision-making and decision-making processes, especially with the abundance of expertise in the educational field, and focus on developing a national framework. As a prerequisite for setting quality standards in the ministry, adopting the speedy completion and development of standards for planning, management, auditing, and accounting, and expanding them to form part of the basics required to achieve a shift to a more proactive and reform-oriented system to ensure the achievement of quality.
In the end, all the facts point to the strong and urgent need for the Ministry of Education to move to an approach that is more dependent on sequence and comprehensiveness in performance, and to move away from personal judgments that may be right or wrong.
Dr. Khaled Al-Nafisi
Published in Al-Qabas newspaper
