Educational performance can be simplified into an equation: educational effectiveness, meaning the achievement of educational goals, multiplied by educational efficiency, meaning the cost and time required to achieve them. Current statistics show both to be low in the Arab world. Education accounts for 25% of government expenditure in Saudi Arabia, 22.5% in the UAE and 12.9% in Kuwait, yet these countries remain below average in PISA assessments. The United States spends 16% and is scientifically advanced in education.
A Lack of Truly Efficient and Optimal Solutions
This stems from solutions introduced into education systems at high cost, with low efficiency and weak, very slow returns. Smart boards, for example, are used in teaching even though studies have found little educational impact beyond mathematics. Even there, they are not essential: graphing software on a computer connected to a projector can be used instead. Another example is the student-to-teacher ratio. In GCC countries, it was 11.8 students per teacher in 2010, better than the 15.1 found in developed countries such as the United States, Britain and European countries. Yet educational effectiveness remains low. The ratio has a limited effect; dozens of studies confirm that the greatest influence within the educational environment is the teacher.
The Most Important Factor
The teacher can therefore be identified as the most important factor, with teaching practice playing the largest role in the education system as a whole. A highly skilled teacher can deliver in two months what takes a less skilled teacher eight months. This helps explain the lower weekly teaching hours in places leading education indicators: Shanghai, 12 hours; Korea, 15; Hong Kong, 17; and Britain, 19. The rest of teachers' working hours are invested in action research, keeping up with developments in their fields, attending seminars, daily discussions and exchanges of experience, and following up on students with close attention to their different circumstances.
The skills teachers use to interact with students, ask questions and answer theirs are also effective teaching approaches that cost nothing beyond learning those skills.
The curriculum plays a role, but its effect is less than half that of the teacher. This raises a question: do services offered by educational development providers aim to improve efficiency and reduce costs, or are their objectives purely commercial? Will we see a future that focuses on developing teachers and adopting scientifically supported ideas to educate the next generation?