By Dr. Rachel Saliba, Prof. Cathrine Brun, Dr. Mohammad Hammoud, Prof. Maha Shuayb

Education Systems Resilience (ESR) is a relatively new concept but builds on more established thinking around risk, crisis, conflict, emergencies, and systems reform in education. The increased attention to ESR must be understood as part of the global policy shift towards resilience. ESR focuses on ensuring that education systems are better equipped to respond to both current and future shocks and disruptions. This emphasis has become particularly important within the growing field of Education in Emergencies (EiE) and after the COVID-19 pandemic, which exposed vulnerabilities and inequalities in education systems worldwide (Brun & Shuayb, 2023; Tarricone et al., 2021).

Despite the emerging manifestation of ESR in global policy, there is limited understanding of what resilience in education systems means in both theory and practice. There is also a gap between the general globalized policy concept and local meanings of resilience. This is especially relevant in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), where global interpretations of resilience, once translated into national policies and programs, tend to replace local understandings and usages. In many contexts, those local understandings of resilience carry deeper political connotations and are associated with collective resistance, justice, belonging, and the power to remain (Badarin, 2023; Giacaman, 2020).

This report examines education resilience in five of the MENA countries. More specifically, it explores the context of education in the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) MENA countries and analyzes how the concept of resilience is integrated within the Ministries of Education’s strategies, plans, and reforms. It seeks to assess the extent to which these strategies, plans, and reforms are resilient against shocks and disruptions, and to position them within the components of the conceptual framework adopted in this study. The report discusses the meaning of education systems’ resilience and how it is approached in national education policies and plans in the MENA.

The report is part of the MENA Observatory on Education System Resilience run by the Centre for Lebanese Studies (CLS). The Observatory is an initiative by the GPE’s Knowledge and Innovation Exchange (GPE KIX) aiming to critically discuss and understand Education Systems Resilience (ESR) in the MENA context. Our vision is to provide research-based evidence that can help the countries included in the study to strengthen education systems, recover from disruptions and have the capacity to anticipate and adapt to future adversities.

We thus develop a working definition of education systems’ resilience for the MENA region, with the aim of analyzing how it is presented in education reforms, strategies, and plans in the five GPE MENA countries: Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia, and Yemen. We discuss the meaning of resilience and education systems resilience (ESR), and apply a framework for analyzing ESR in national education strategies and plans in the five countries. In the case studies presented, we analyze to what extent ESR is present as well as the meaning of resilience applied in official education strategies, plans, policies, and reforms.

The study seeks to answer the following questions:

1. What is the state of education in the GPE MENA countries?

2. How is “resilience” manifested in the Ministries of Education’s strategies, plans, and reforms?

3. To what extent are national education strategies, plans, and reforms resilient against shocks and disruptions?

4. Where do these education strategies, plans, and reforms fall within a framework of education system resilience that this study adopts?

In addressing these questions, our study focuses on marginalized groups in education, including women, individuals with disabilities, migrants, and those affected by socioeconomic, class, and urban-rural divides.