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The year 2019 has been rich in achievements with regard to our work on curriculum and learning both region-wide and through country-based projects.

Inter-regional Arab - Africa Ed-Align initiative

We continued efforts towards enhancing educational alignment that have been launched in November 2018, with the SDG4 AR-MED III meeting in Dead Sea, Jordan. In the spirit of the Joint Statement on educational alignment issued in 2018, we conducted a follow up workshop on 17-19 June 2019 in Beirut, reuniting 11 Arab countries and six African countries representatives, as well as Regional and international education experts. A road Map on promoting and enhancing alignment of curriculum/learning, teacher policies and practices and assessment has been agreed upon. As part of this road Map, countries prompted UNESCO (UNESCO ED/ESCTED, UNESCO Beirut and UNESCO Dakar) to support their educational alignment efforts through the development of an Ed-Align Toolkit. A first comprehensive draft of the Toolkit was discussed in Dubai (Dec. 2019) in the context of the International Task Force on Teachers for Education 2030 annual Policy Forum. Enrichment, validation and customization activities of the Ed-align will follow up in 2020.

UNESCO Beirut’s contribution as implementing partner of the UNICEF-led Life Skills and Citizenship Education initiative (LSCE) - Amman, Jordan, 14-15 October 2019

This year’s LSCE annual partner meeting brought together traditional partners, as well as teams of several countries in the MENA region. The meeting was conducted in an interactive way, based on the “fish bowl” concept in plenaries and several thematic groups. A new addition was the “market place” sharing of initiatives and materials on Day one.

Our office participated in plenary panels in both days. On Day one, Dr. Dakmara Georgescu, UNESCO Beirut's Programme Specialist for Teachers and Curriculum Development, was part of a panel on trends and issues with regard to skills development in the MENA region. And on Day two, she was part of a panel on how to take things forward and UNESCO’s commitment to implementing Skills development in the Arab region, especially in the light of implementing Education Agenda 2030.

Our office managed also the UNESCO Beirut exhibition booth on Day one (open market sharing), where we shared information and materials (including videos) on different UNESCO Beirut projects and programmes on curriculum, teachers, Youth/skills development for work, and GCED/PVE. Before, during and after the meeting a Yammer platform was established, which includes also the videotaping of several sessions.

UNICEF in collaboration with WB have also shared progresses made in developing strategies and tools for assessing skills for life and work. These strategies and tools are still in a pilot phase in three countries who opted to volunteer. More information will be probably shared in early 2020. Discussions stressed the importance that such approaches do not harm the spirit of developing “life skills” - and the need that assessment purposes are clearly defined in accordance to country needs and contexts.

Classroom-based Formative Assessment/CBFA (2-4 July 2019) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

At the invitation of UNESCO Dakar and HQ, Dr. Dakmara Georgescu contributed as expert to the Regional TALENT (The Teaching and Learning Educators’ Network for Transformation) capacity-building workshop on Classroom-based Formative Assessment/CBFA (2-4 July, 2019) in Addis Ababa, organized by UNESCO Dakar/TALENT and Education 2030 support, and IICBA with GPE support.

Among the main outcomes of this workshop are as follows:

• Conceptual clarification: The workshop provided an excellent opportunity for clarifying the concept of “formative assessment” (i.e. assessment for learning) - and how to balance it with summative assessment (i.e. assessment of learning) in the context of national curriculum and assessment systems. Participants have debated also extensively about the role of formative assessment in promoting assessment as learning especially with regard of developing and assessing both the 21st Century skills/soft skills and the hard skills/subject- or knowledge-bound competencies. As in the Arab countries, while summative assessment is quite dominant, teacher- and class-room based formative assessment are less utilized in African countries, which leads to lack of balance and relevance in assessing student learning and learning outcomes from a broader perspective (i.e. whole child- or whole-learner approach) and  in line with forward-looking concepts of learning.
• Education alignment: Emphasis has been also put on the need of aligning curriculum/learning, teacher policies and practices, and assessment with a view of implementing Education Agenda 2030 and reaching SDG4 targets. Dr. Dakmara Georgescu shared in this regard extensively about our inter-regional meetings (Arab-Africa) in Dead Sea (AR-MED III, Nov. 18) and ED-Align in Beirut (June 2019).
• Stock taking of different initiatives: Experts from Brookings Institute, as well as African country experts have shared different studies and initiatives with regard to developing learning assessment systems including by building teachers’ capacities to facilitate learning. The results of a pre-workshop questionnaire addressed to country representatives have been also shared (i.e. on country realities and needs with regard to enhancing their assessment policies and practices).
• Needs assessment and ideas for developing support tools: Participants could share about their needs of being supported in promoting CBFA through specific capacity development strategies and tools. It has been agreed that a CBFA toolkit would be of great support for African countries given it is based on promising and innovative practices (including the usage of ICTs) customized to the different country contexts. UNESCO’s support was thus requested for the follow up.

The workshop proved an enjoyable experience altogether, with participants sharing their appreciation and enthusiasm for the topic selected and the innovative approaches to assessment and alignment it brought about. It constituted also a good opportunity of strengthening UNESCO cross-regional collaboration in the context of implementing Education Agenda 2030 that should be continued in the future. Synergies between TALENT activities and our previous inter-regional initiatives (AR-MED III and ED-Align) have to be reinforced in the future. A joint planning meeting in this regard may be organized in September 2020 in Paris, Dakar or Beirut. 

Lebanon: Starting with a workshop on 14-15 January 2019 in its premises, our office worked closely with the Lebanese Centre for Educational Research and Development (CERD) on the idea of developing a Lebanese Curriculum Framework, as a main reference document for quality curriculum review and implementation in the country.

Yemen: At the request of the Yemeni Ministry of Education, a core team of curriculum experts has been trained in Beirut in April 2019 on current trends in international and regional curriculum development. The team explored also the processes and capacities needed for developing a Yemeni Curriculum Framework to guide comprehensive K-12 curriculum renewal in the future.

Syria: With the support of UNESCO  Beirut, the Ministry of Education and the National Centre for Curriculum Development (NCCD) finalized the Syria National Curriculum Framework as a main reference document of the Syria curriculum renewal process. The document was officially launched ahead of the new school year 2019-2020 in the context of a National launching event on 26 August 2019. It has been also discussed during the National Education Conference the Syrian Ministry of Education organized in Damascus on 26-28 September 2019. Following technical workshops our office supported, MoE and NCCD are in the process of finalizing/fine tuning and implementing a Road Map on disseminating and translating the Syrian National Curriculum Framework into daily school practice.