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Video: Primary and Secondary Education Sectoral Conference
Transcript:MR. FOX: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Ed Fox. I'm the Assistant Administrator for Legislative and Public Affairs here at the United States Agency for International Development. I want to welcome you this morning, on behalf of the Administrator, Andrew Natsios, to what is the first of a series of consultative meetings we're having on sectoral issues that we are working on in Iraq. We, structurally, this morning, will have a couple of people address you in the beginning to talk a little bit about what we're trying to do, and we'll have plenty of time for discussion. We have a variety of people in the audience, including a few members of the press. However, we would appreciate it that, with regard to the press, we do not consider this a press conference, but let the other participants ask questions. We will have a press officer here who would be delighted to talk to those members of the press after the main consultative meeting is over with. So we would appreciate that. As I indicated, we're going to have a series of these discussions dealing with different sectors over the next several weeks. If you go to our website, you will find most of that information there about the particular dates, and if you do have interest in other meetings, we will be taking reservations four days in advance of the meetings as they're listed. And the lists may change as our activities change, so just keep referring to those dates and times. We have some other materials out in the hall, for those of you who are here in person, with regard to the things that we're doing that might be useful for background. If I can, I would like to kick it off, and we're going to have a little overview by my colleague, Wendy Chamberlin, who is the Assistant Administrator for Asia and the Near East. Wendy is a career Foreign Service Officer with many years of senior service at the State Department. We were very lucky that, upon completing her assignment as Ambassador to Pakistan, she was willing to come over and assist us and is now our senior administration official dealing with Asia and the Near East. She's been Ambassador to Laos, as well as Pakistan, and many years in senior positions at the State Department. And if I can, I would like to turn it over to Wendy to provide some comments. AMBASSADOR CHAMBERLIN: Well, thank you very much. I'm delighted to see that there's so much interest in today's discussions. This is the first of our sector meetings, and it should not be lost on you that the first of our sector meetings is on education because this is a sector that is so enormously important to the people of Iraq, and it's a very high priority on our reconstruction agenda. Many of you already know from the many, very many, press briefings and public statements that Andrew Natsios, our Administrator, has been giving recently, that planning, on a contingency basis, for reconstruction efforts in Iraq began many months ago. It began on a contingency basis because we really didn't know what was going to happen. We had all hoped, it was the President's policy, it was the President's fervent hope that war could be avoided. But in any case, prudent planning was necessary, and so it began, and we have been thinking for some time about what might be needed in Iraq. Needed by whom? Needed by the Iraqi people, with particular focus on Iraqi children--health needs, education needs, housing needs--and this has driven our process for some time. Well, I don't need to review some of the obvious. We are at almost a beginning, if you will, now in reconstruction because the reconstruction begins. Today, just moments ago, in fact, I received a telephone call from Lewis Lucke, who is the USAID Mission Director. He heads a mission of about 30-plus people. They are embedded with Jay Garner. But he called me from Baghdad. And we are setting up our office in Baghdad. That's his order of business today. We will have a small group of people there. He, himself, as Mission Director, will actually go back in a couple of days to Kuwait City to begin to facilitate the work of reconstruction. The work of reconstruction will be bringing in our experts, bringing in our material, bringing in the equipment, bringing in what we need to do to help the Iraqi people. This is still very much an assistance program, assistance in the meaning of the word "assistance." We are assisting the Iraqi people to do what they need to do to get their society back running on all eight cylinders. Beyond that, there are many very large differences between our approach to an AID mission in Iraq than we have in other countries throughout the world. I think the largest, most significant difference is the magnitude, the enormous generosity of the President and the Congress in passing the supplemental and of the American taxpayer in funding a reconstruction humanitarian program for Iraq, for the Iraqi people, with the clear purpose of giving a jump start to this society that has been very much oppressed for a couple of decades, get them back up and running quick, turn it over to the Iraqi people. We've encountered, we knew that they were there. Lew confirmed to me today that everywhere they go, whatever ministry, whatever clinic, whatever school, they find enormously capable, willing Iraqi people who want to work to get their society up and running. So there's a tremendous spirit of optimism that I got today over the telephone call and also a tremendous urgency. Let's get on with this business, get on with the business of helping the Iraqi people so that we can leave, and we certainly intend to do that. We don't want to move so fast, though, that we don't stop to collect inputs from experts and from the Iraqi experts, specifically. So, to tell you the truth, that's what today is, and that's what these next several sector meetings are. Ed was quite right to say that, although we've invited the press, this is not a press conference because a press conference usually ends up with you all asking us and we giving answers. That's not the intention of today. Today, we want to listen. We want to hear from experts, most specifically those of you regional experts, as to what you think is important. We have structured our reconstruction program in a way that still allows for a lot of input as we begin to go in and work with the Iraqi experts on the ground. We have these contracts. You've read about them, but they're accordions, and they're very flexible. They provide for very generous assistance in every area, including the education sector, but what is specifically done within that sector is yet to be specifically determined and will not be determined by us. It will be determined in collaboration, in large part, with the decisions of the Iraqi experts in the field. So this is one of many steps. We've had these sector meetings before, to tell you the truth, in early planning phases, but they weren't quite as open as this next series of sector meetings. So we have reached out as early as last, was it October that we began talking to some or November, perhaps, talking to Iraqi experts in the field on the future of the Iraq program run by the State Department, et cetera. So I would like to actually let Dana Peterson and Ross Wherry, who are really the guts and the muscle of our reconstruction program, answer some of your questions, unless you have a couple of them for me before I turn the podium over to Dana and Ross. Inputs? Ideas? [No response.] AMBASSADOR CHAMBERLIN: Okay. MR. WHERRY: Good morning. My name is Ross Wherry. I'm the Senior Reconstruction Adviser for the Agency dealing with Iraq. My job is to take you from the information that you, I hope, have already looked at on our web page, where we've gone through as much as we could, as quickly as we could on that, and try then and put this meeting into context. Essentially, USAID is involved in four areas of the much larger reconstruction that is being operated by the Office of Relief or our Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, which is a Department of Defense agency. The first activity that we are primarily involved in is the restoration of essential infrastructure, electricity and water. That also includes school buildings, which have not had any significant amount of investment in the last 20 years, as far as we can tell. The second major area is social services, which is health and education. Education is the piece that we're looking at today. The third main area is economic institutions. That touches education in the sense that education must be financed by someone, and up to now it's been the government. It also includes agriculture, governmental institutions such as the Ministry of Finance and Central Bank, and a look at how the private sector in Iraq can be invigorated after these years of state control. The fourth area which touches education as well is local governance. We are looking at ways of increasing the amount of participation of Iraqis in the way that they are governed at the local level. We are looking at the delivery of reconstruction benefits in an open and participative manner: the infrastructure activities, private-sector activities, as well as how you handle education. And we're looking at how to assist the development of civil society organizations within Iraq since these right now are just starting to come up spontaneously. Within that framework, one of the things that we believe is tremendously important is how do you deal with the future of Iraq, which is its children. We're looking at what could be done with activities in the education sector, what is the appropriate role for USAID in these activities, bringing to bear the experience that we have in other places. I'd like to introduce the person who's actually doing the heavy lifting on this, Dana Peterson, who has been working on these activities specifically, and Dana will be the moderator for the remainder of the session. Dana? MS. PETERSON: Good morning. Just so you're aware, we're actually trying to have a colleague, who is out in Kuwait City, on speaker phone here. That is one of my colleagues, Norm Rifkin, has been on the phone, but we are hoping she can participate in the consultations. What I would like to do is start with providing some development context, in terms of what has helped shaped our initial planning efforts in the education sector, and then talk about some of the areas in which we would be able to support Iraqi-led initiatives and some key objectives that we will be targeting in this assistance. In terms of the development context, in recognizing that various statistics and data are viewed in the context of a highly fluid environment out there, which will require further ground-trooping and consultations with multiple stakeholders as we support Iraqi efforts in this area, I would like to just touch upon our understanding of the status of the basic education system in Iraq. There is general consensus that the quality of education has decreased significantly over the years, with Iraq going from having one of the best educational systems in the Arab World to now one of the weakest. Insufficient resources have gone into maintaining and repairing school buildings, updating and printing textbooks, purchasing and distributing school equipment and supplies, providing training for teachers, and maintaining and upgrading skills of school administrators. Added to these systemic challenges is current looting of educational facilities and other areas. The decreased quality of education has given greater incentives for children to stay out of the classroom. Statistics indicate primary enrollment is only approximately 76 percent and, at the secondary level, 20 to 33 percent, with twice as many girls staying out of school as boys. Nearly two million children and adolescents have dropped out of school, and there are limited opportunities to reintegrate into the formal schooling or acquire life skills. Those who stay through secondary school often lack sufficient skills for the labor market. Compounding this is a shortage of buildings and teachers, with approximately 35 percent of all schools on double or triple shifts, which results in children sometimes only receiving three hours of instruction in a day. In light of what has been mentioned, USAID's intention is to facilitate and support Iraqi-led initiatives to address the quality and reform of basic education. All of our implementation efforts would seek, and will seek, the full participation of key stakeholders. What is envisioned with our assistance in this sector is to address two primary objectives; one, get as many children as possible back in the classroom by the start of the new school year and, two, keep those children in school by improving the quality and services within the classroom. With respect to issues of enrollment, USAID sees the rehabilitation of schools as critical. This includes ensuring sufficient electricity, water and sanitation facilities, and sufficient equipment and supplies to facilitate constructive learning. There is recognition of the need to ensure teachers receive appropriate compensation for their efforts. Out-of-school youth could be targeted, through accelerated learning programs, to help them to reenter school in their appropriate age cohort, building on existing pilot initiatives actually in Iraq for nonformal girls' education. And we are also in a position to support community awareness and social mobilization programs which highlight the importance of children returning to, and staying in, school, with a particular sensitivity to girls. In terms of the second objective, with respect to issues of retention and the quality of instruction, USAID will support Iraqi initiatives related to teacher training which seek to incorporate more participatory and child-centered learning methods. This builds upon plans, actually, that are already in existence in Iraq to introduce qualitative improvements in teaching. In addition, USAID envisions supporting Iraqis and laying the foundation for future education reform. We are in a position to assist the Ministry of Education and others with structural reform and providing support and assistance on policy dialogue, resource planning, establishment of educational standards, data management and other key responsibilities, thus, setting the stage for strengthened capacity to deliver sustainable educational services. Recognizing the important of tertiary education, and workforce development and overall economic development, USAID would like to explore activities that promote university partnerships, national, regional and international partnerships, with an objective of cultivating intellectual diversity and innovative subject material to prepare students for leadership and employment in a competitive market economy, and we look forward to feedback on those endeavors. We would like to now receive your input on this critical sector, but I would first like to have a couple of my colleagues who are also working on this issue, in an in-depth, technical way, introduce themselves, and we very much look forward to receiving your input. Thank you. Norm? MR. RIFKIN: My name is Norm Rifkin. I'm the Education Adviser to the Iraq Reconstruction Task Force. MS. PETERSON: Frank? MR. DALL: [Off microphone.] My name is Frank Dall. I'm the Project Director for the [inaudible]. MS. PETERSON: I apologize. Because this is broadcast live on the web, I'll need to ensure that all comments go into the microphone. So, for those who are viewing this from afar, Norm Rifkin is our Education Adviser working on Iraq here at USAID, and Frank Dall is our Senior Program Manager with Creative Associates, who will be supporting us in implementing our education program in Iraq. Anne Dykstra? Anne? MS. DYKSTRA: Hello and good morning. I'm Anne Dykstra, and I am from Kuwait. I am the Education Adviser with USAID here in Kuwait and for the Iraq team. MS. PETERSON: Thank you, Anne. Would anyone like to start, please? We're balancing many technological aspects here to this. So would anyone like to start with some input and feedback, please? And, yes, if you could please come to the microphone so that those who were unable to be present here can follow the discussion. MR. LONG: Hello, Charles Long, BIS. I'm curious to know how you, since you have [audio break] with men interacting with women and the training--the HIO project in Egypt, in particular, which was during the Clinton administration. And during that one what we did was we put together training facilities that was interactive, and you could see from a distance, on TV, you could see the instructor, and we had computers inside, in which case they could interact back and forth, and we had an infrastructure of that fashion to happen. In Saudi Arabia, particularly the one in Riyadh--not so much Jeddah. Jeddah wasn't as difficult as the Riyadh region--but in that one, in particular, what had to happen was we actually trained them in the technical aspects, and then we brought females in to actually do the examinations, and that sort of thing, on an interactive basis. So those were some of the kinds of constraints and considerations that needed to be addressed, particularly from the cultural perspective. MS. PETERSON: Thank you. Why don't we continue to solicit feedback, and then we can also be in a position to, again, draw upon some of the expertise up here as well. Please? MR. WHITE: Yes, good morning. I'm Charles White from SAIC, Science Applications International Corporation. And I've spent some years with USAID in the Africa Bureau. So my experience, in terms of offering suggestions here, would be in terms of I believe maybe you're familiar with the EDDI program. That, I think, has been applied in Africa, and one of the salient aspects of it is, of course, the scholarships that are given to girls. The focus is on female in Africa and scholarships are given. SAIC manages the program and implements it through subcontractors in Africa. So that's one aspect that I think that we can learn some lessons from this particular experience in Africa that can be applicable in Iraq. Thanks. MS. PETERSON: Colleagues, if you have further questions to those who are providing their feedback, if you'd like to draw out the discussion a little more, please feel free. You will have to, unfortunately, speak into the microphone, Norm, so I can stand aside, if you would like to. MR. RIFKIN: I just hope that some of the participants will be able to leave their contact points with us, so we can get back in touch with an individual. MS. PETERSON: There was a request to provide contact points for those who are providing input in this session so that we can continue to remain in communication and discussion with those individuals. Thank you. Please? MS. WORMSER: Good morning. I'm May Wormser from the Hudson Institute. I have heard a lot this morning, and in reading your website, about the technical aspects of education, but I've heard relatively little about curriculum changes. The reason why I'm bringing it up is because, for years now, I've been dealing with the issue of Arab education systems. In fact, I have written a book about the Syrian textbooks that are being used still in Syria. In the Iraqi case, as you guys might know, we actually did not have real access to textbooks until relatively recently, but from the little that we are already seeing, I am seeing--in fact, I have completed last night an article about this for the Weekly Standard--you see many of the same systematic problems that you see in a state like Syria. Children are taught to mostly obey and be subservient to their system. More than anything else, you are dealing not only with a lack of any sense of democracy or freedom, but with a total indoctrination to the level of brainwashing of children into accepting their dictatorship, not questioning anything, and, in fact, serving as little soldiers whose sole goal is to die for the sake of their state. In Syria, it's so extreme that President Assad even established a special city--this is in the textbooks for fourth grade--for the children of martyrs, basically promising children that if they or their family members blow themselves up and commit suicide attacks against the United States or Israel, they can come and be basically adopted as family members of President Assad and be raised in the City of the Children of Martyrs, and all of their financial and other needs will be taken care of. So this is the kind of problems that I think we're looking into. And what I am wondering, and what I would like to hear from you guys, is to what extent are you aware of these problems, what is being done on the level of curriculum change? MS. PETERSON: Would either of you like to--again, we will draw upon Iraqi-led initiatives in this, but Frank and Anne Dykstra may have some comments on their understandings of what has been evolving on the Iraqi front with respect to this. MR. DALL: I just finished seven years of work looking after Iraq for UNICEF in the Middle East, so I know what's going on in Iraq, more or less. My last mission was about two years ago. It's changed, of course, in the two years, as we've had some traumatic experiences since. But basically on curriculum, a group who was led by the State Department has been meeting over these last few months, a group of Iraqis--I was included in that group--to look at the whole issue of educational reform, the Futures Group on Education. One of the things that we were looking at, of course, is curriculum and what do we do about that. Of course, it needs to be radically altered and changed. The issue is a very complex one because, of course, as you all know, curriculum is highly sensitive and very political. Who is responsible for the change in curriculum? Should it be an interim administration or should it be a duly elected, long-term government? So the issue is a thorny one, but we are presented with the issue currently of what is it that we're going to give kids to learn when they get into school, when the school year begins, and that's a critical issue for us at the moment. I suppose one of the ways of dealing with this, and I think we're still discussing this, is to expurgate all existing textbooks of whatever content is ideological and not the sort of content that we want to see in the books, and you put it very well, you described what was in the books extremely well. I know Syria well. I know all of the books in Syria, too. I know the books in Iraq because we had a hand in trying to reform out some of the content in the books in the last few years, and I can assure you it was difficult to do because it was very state controlled. So anything that we suggested was accepted, but never really accepted. It never really got to the books. So it was a little game that we were playing. I think we need to expurgate the books quickly and have something in the hands of children by the beginning of the school year. Quite how we do that in the quantities that we will have to do that is going to be a problem that we're all thinking about at the moment. The number of textbooks, basic education is a nine-year cycle in Iraq. They've moved to a basic education cycle where the first seven years, and then the next two years, are truncated into one cycle--a good way to go cheaper, more efficient, more effective. Kids who have to leave school leave with something more than just a basic primary education. So we take those books, the basic education books. I think there are eight or nine textbooks for basic education alone. And the numbers that we will have to deal with and reprint ready for the beginning of the year, which is probably the 1st of October, is going to be an enormous challenge. That's only basic education. We are not talking about the secondary level, where you can double that because there will be many more textbooks that we will have to look at. I think the thinking at the moment is to share the load, and the load needs to be shared, and we have lots of potential partners who can share this with us, but I think we're still thinking about it, but it's not something that we're excluding from the formula that we're applying at the moment, but there's an awful lot to do in a very short time. MS. PETERSON: [Off microphone.] And if you could explain [inaudible]. MR. DALL: Yes. What we're doing is actually we formed a committee of Iraqis, about seven or eight, balanced, I think--we're trying to be very balanced on this--who will be, hopefully, looking at some of these issues, and whoever gets this is going to have to do probably that process in the same way, get them to sit down and read these books and perhaps begin to edit out whatever can be edited out, quickly remove pictures and all that sort of thing. The thinking we have at the moment is that the science texts and the technical texts will be much easier to deal with than the social texts; that is, the civics, and the history, and the geography and all of the rest of it, which will probably have to be radically rewritten, but it is a challenge. I am not fully aware of the whole USAID strategy. What I'm trying to outline here is a strategy that a group of us were trying to come up with in a separate context, but is complementary to everything that we're doing here, but I think it's still being thought out. But if we go to the gender issue, which is a terrifically important issue, it's less important in Iraq. Of the 22 Arab countries I've worked in, in the last seven years, Iraq, by the way, was the easiest to work in because the gender separation issue was not a crucial issue. It's a secular state or it's been run like a secular state. So, certainly, most of the teacher training we did, most of the technical training we did for adults was always mixed. It was never separated. I've worked in Iran, too, where we separated. I mean, even at big meetings like this, the women will sit all on one side, and the men will sit all on one side. And if women were asking me questions, I couldn't answer questions directly. I had to talk to another woman who would then answer the questions for me, but that's the other extreme. But in Iraq, I don't think we'll have that problem. But I think it is sensitive, it's changing, and it could go right back to an insistence that that sort of separation be applied, and if it is, I think it will be area specific, it won't be throughout Iraq. I think it's a very complex environment. We can't generalize about this environment. I think we're going to see many, many changes, and we're going to have to be very sensitive to these changes, and we're going to have to roll with the changes, but whatever model we come out with I think has to be sensitive to the different cultural entities in Iraq. And in the discussions that we've already been participating in, the different ethnic groups or subgroups within Iraq, the Kurds, and others, the Shi'ites and so on, have all spoken out for the need to have within the curriculum and within whatever happens in education, their views equally reflected, and I think any future group that looks into this will have to be sensitive to all of them. But I think--we're in the early days yet--but I think we have to be intelligent, sensitive, and we have to understand the complexities, and we do. And I think the reason why we've been selected to do this is that some of us have some experience handling this sort of situation in that context, and we'll give it all we've got, the best that we've got, with your help. We need your help, of course. MS. PETERSON: Yes? MS. RUSSO: Dierdre Russo, American Red Cross. I'm speaking to the education issue based on my experience in Northern Iraq with UNICEF and also working on back-to-school education issues in Afghanistan. One of the concerns I had working in the North was that, since the Gulf War until now, there's really been a decrease in Arabic language education and proficiency. And so in addition to the cultural issues, I think in primary education now you do have a large group of students in the North that are no longer able to complete their primary education studies in Arabic and, in fact, are in two different Kurdish dialects. And so how are you thinking, in terms of bringing in regional, say, from Iran or other neighboring countries, curricula in order to deal with that issue until there can be a larger national education program? It's my personal belief that classical Arabic should be reintroduced in the primary education system so that the whole country can learn in one language or at least be proficient because the technical subjects are still relying on Arabic. Secondly, given the economic issues and given the sanctions, higher education and technical subjects are incredibly outdated, as you know. So how are you thinking about addressing those gaps, in terms of secondary education and preparing individuals to move into more technical subjects or into the economy? Thank you. MS. PETERSON: Thank you. Actually, drawing upon your experiences, if you could speak to that somewhat, too, please. MR. DALL: [Off microphone.] I really don't want to dominate this response because I think my colleagues in USAID have probably a lot more to say about this than I do. MS. : [Off microphone.] [Inaudible.] MR. DALL: I am that. Yes, all of those are really very relevant. I mean, bringing the curriculum up-to-date, clearly, from a technical point of view, is important, but actually it's not that technically out of date--in the North it is. There was a separate development in the North. I participated in that for at least two or three years, trying to look at some of these issues. There is a language issue. We need to address the language issue. We need to be sensitive to that. It really does depend here on whatever model that is selected to run the country eventually. There are different groups discussing different models. The future Constitution and the governance model I think will determine, to some extent, how sensitive the curriculum is to all of the issues that you are rightly raising. If we go with a federal model or a federalist model, which is one model that is being talked about, I hate jumping the gun on this because we are still open on this, but-- MR. : This is not a political discussion. MR. DALL: Yes, but the issue is that will be very sensitive to all of the different groups, and language will definitely be part of all of that in response. But I think you're quite right. We have to look at all of those things simultaneously. How quickly we look at those things depends on our list of priorities. If getting everybody back to school is a priority and getting some sort of learning going in all schools for all children is a priority--and it is our priority--then that should be taken as a priority. And some of the other issues that you raised that are good technical issues will be looked at, at some point, but I don't think immediately, and certainly not within the next few months because we do have to race to get ahead of ourselves. MS. DYKSTRA: Colleagues, if I could add something from the field. I have had a little bit of difficulty hearing names, and I think that I recognize the voice of Frank Dall speaking there. Whoever the last speaker was, I want to reinforce the idea of helping to get children back in school. There's some very practical issues that are being addressed here by parents, by partners, by those that are in the field even doing quick repairs. The biggest concern right now is to help children finish last year's cycle of education. Parents are concerned that children get back into school, that they pass this year's examinations, and that they move into the new year having done everything they can to graduate or move from one grade to another. So I wanted to reinforce that in the immediate, near future right now, we're working with everyone we can to get schools back up and running, the needs of the people, the concerns of the people, to get children back to a normal routine and to establish a process that we can help, then, the Iraqis lead the reform of their education and have a very encompassing dialogue on all of the technicalities that you raised. So I think that there will be a lot of time, a lot of help needed, a lot of consultation-- not an easy process, as everyone has indicated, and certainly culturally complex, but we're focused, at the present time, on the more immediate issues. MR. RIFKIN: Thank you very much, Anne. That was very useful. For those of you who have been following the events that have been happening in--my name is Norman Rifkin. For those who have been following the events that have been happening in Afghanistan, I'd like to point out that the situation in Iraq is really very different because education is highly valued in Iraq. There has been a relatively high participation of girls in the past, although in recent years that's slipped somewhat, and a demonstration of this is that the schools have already opened in large parts of the country, particularly in the South and in the North. The Iraqis are very concerned that their children be able to take and pass the exams, and this is very important because you have these transitional years in Grades 6, 9 and 12 where the children pass from one level of schooling to another, and it's very important that they do that or else they'll be on the streets, and this raises other issues. So I just wanted to make that point. MS. PETERSON: Does anyone else have some feedback or comments on this particular topic in particular? Please. MR. : I'm from Info Technology, and maybe my comment might relate to the last point you raised about training skill force. I don't know would that be an issue or not. But we have been doing work in Egypt for the last three years under USAID funding mainly in infrastructure and IT, but I think one of the good programs that was successful was training people, like high school graduates and college students, on today's technology, and that was mainly advertising in the local newspaper. They were giving like scholarships for the good students to come in and take the training, and that helped. And the training was given mostly by American companies, European countries, like in areas like IBM, Database, that type of thing, and that immediately developed a good workforce that can get involved quickly in different aspects. MS. PETERSON: Thank you very much. Do you have a follow-on question? Okay. More input, please. [No response.] MS. PETERSON: Do any of my colleagues have any specific questions that they would like to raise to solicit further feedback? Please? MR. HARRINGTON: Hi. My name is Larry Harrington, and I'm an attorney here in town, and I have a couple of kind of disparate questions. One is I--and some input, I hope--one, I noticed is that the issue as to the school buildings is in the infrastructure and the other sector, but I guess confirming that that's the case, but a little bit of input. It's symbolically and, in fact, important in those places where there are serious problems with the infrastructure to try to get in place good infrastructure quickly. Some of these other issues, obviously we know how difficult they are to work with, it's going to take time, but you can particularly--and I'm here on behalf of a client, Global Portable Buildings, so we have a vested interest in it--but it's important to try to use some of the technology that we have and that others have to get in place good infrastructure and good school rooms because that means a lot, and it's very apparent and obvious, and I think that's important these days. So I would hope that you all could integrate well with the team that is taking care of that issue as well and make sure that that issue is focused on, as well as the curricula. The second is, is that I know, just through what my office has received, there are some interesting inputs from some other countries. I know I have received some interesting ideas from the U.K., in terms of what some groups there are doing. There is a Spanish university, I know, that is putting together a program this summer involving Arab women and business. And so I would hope that we would be able to reach out obviously to other countries, some that we've worked with closely recently, for example, and some that have some experience in the region that maybe we don't have, some different experiences, and work with them. Thank you very much. MS. PETERSON: Absolutely. Thank you very much. Does anyone else have any comments? Please. MR. KRIEGER: Good morning. My name is Scott Krieger. I'm with Class.com. We are an electronic curriculum provider. I actually have a couple of questions. You seem to be very willing to take input from those in the room and elsewhere. What is the ongoing process for continuing that process to you and your staff? MS. PETERSON: There was a request for individuals to provide their contact information to us, and we can continue to further a dialogue or exchange that way. So if you have another suggestion on how you would like to further this-- MR. : [Off microphone.] We can do this again in three or four weeks [inaudible]. MS. PETERSON: Sure. If there's interest, we can arrange to have this done in approximately another month or so, since the situation is so fluid. Is there interest? Okay. Well, we will put out information on this, and then we can also set up more direct communication as well. MR. KRIEGER: And, secondly, maybe one of you could overview the technology infrastructure in Iraq, as far as pertaining to education. MS. PETERSON: The technology infrastructure. MR. DALL: [Off microphone.] [Inaudible.] MS. PETERSON: Can you speak, I'm sorry, into the microphone here, please. Thank you. MR. DALL: Infrastructure, generally, not just educational, but across the board is good. Certainly, IT technologies are quite advanced or were. Everything is obviously run down, and to what extent it's been destroyed or decommissioned, I don't know, at this stage, without going back. But education was a good network, a good system, very central, a very socialist model. If you think of Eastern Europe and other socialist models, you've got the Iraqi model only they had a little more money than most people to spend on education. They didn't spend it on education. One of the issues over the Oil-for-Food that we struggled with for many years was that that money wasn't going into education. Each sector was allocated some money, but we knew the money wasn't going into the sectors for which that money was allocated. It was going into other things, and that's the reason why over the last 15 or 20 years everything is so run down. But, basically, it's there. What's happened is you had huge population growth rates in between, and they haven't built more schools. So you have now a great demand for schooling and a lot of places, a lot of villages and towns without adequate schooling facilities. So there are a number of things that need to be addressed, as far as educational infrastructure is concerned--more obviously to cover the growing population, and then get what is there up again, and then get what is destroyed rebuilt. I don't know how much has been destroyed or how much has been looted. From what I gather, the looting is minimal, and it's confined to some of the big cities and towns only. My guess is that rural schools that were always neglected, probably nobody has any interest in even looting those, but they're there, and they probably need quite a bit of help to just get them going again. But if we're going to focus on getting everybody to school by the 1st of October, we need to get the teachers there, and we need to get things going in the classrooms and basic resources in the schools. If we can do all of those three things at the same time within the next few months, we should have a "crackingly" good school year for most kids. Secondary schools may be a different challenge. I have a feeling that secondary schools are going to be a big challenge. A lot more resources are missing. The incentive to leave schooling at an older age is there, and we may have to lure kids back and make that more attractive again. And you probably would have lost some of your best-trained teachers, as your secondary-level teachers are trained to do other than teaching. So they have a market, and they can walk. They can leave. I used to sit in an office in Amman, and people would come through with CVs, mainly teachers, in the hundreds all looking for work, all leaving Iraq. That's going to be a real issue. AMBASSADOR CHAMBERLIN: Let me just make a little clarification. When we're talking about the "we," we really mean the Iraqi people. You saw that it was General Garner's intention to get the ministries up as quickly as possible; in fact, ministries open within days. There will be an Education Ministry. We will have Iraqis making these decisions. Many of these decisions are going to be Iraqi decisions. So this contract, and AID, and the United States Government isn't solely responsible for this. This will be the responsibility of the Iraqi people. We will merely be helping them do it, as I said before, assistance, and that's our intention. If there was a larger question or maybe even a smaller question embedded in that last one on IT, let me also clarify that among the sectors that AID has taken on to provide assistance to the Iraqi people, telecommunications is not one of them. There is no larger contract being done here in AID for telecommunications. There is a policy group within the U.S. Government that is looking at that. That's headed by Ambassador David Gross at the State Department. There are people who are concerned and looking also at helping the Iraqi people get their telecom systems up, but that focus is not centered here. MS. PETERSON: Please. MR. : Maybe it is a follow-on question, but in terms of school infrastructure, are there any plans to provide Internet access, the infrastructure for the school system, not certainly for the whole country, ability to provide PCs for the schools, for example--I don't know what's the status of that--ability of training teachers on how to access Internet, how to develop content? So all of these are issues that relate to IT, but from the education point of view. MS. PETERSON: Right. If the Iraqis prioritize this area and request the assistance, we are in a position to help support in that area. Yes, please? MS. WORMSER: One more quick question. I know that Creative Associates has hired several subcontractors to help with the work. In fact, two of them, Carol O'Leary from American University and Rend Franke from the Iraq Foundation, are really, really close friends of mine. So I know they're wonderful, and it's going to be great. But I know that a question in the community somewhat is, is it all a done deal? Has everything been decided, as far as who are the consultants and how the [inaudible]? MS. PETERSON: Yes. Just as Ambassador Chamberlain mentioned, these mechanisms are flexible, and we want to ensure the ability to draw upon expertise in a range of areas, as needed, and so while there may be prime relationships set up, it is understood that various other partnerships and relationships can be developed, again to draw upon the regional expertise, technical expertise, et cetera, in meeting the needs. AMBASSADOR CHAMBERLIN: We're going to take one more question. MS. PETERSON: More opportunity to--yes, please? And I apologize, it's a little challenging to have a full interactive discussion with the way this is set up, but we wanted to ensure that others who could not be present in this room could be able to listen to the discussion. So thank you for bearing with us on this. Thanks. MR. METHOD: Thank you. I'm Frank Method. I direct the Education Policy Group at Research Triangle Institute, which is one of the partners with Creative Associates, and American University and others to implement this. We've had an excellent presentation of at least some of the things that we need to deal with in the run-up from now to October 1st in getting kids back into school, and the arrangements that need to be made for textbooks, and teacher retraining, and all of the rest of that, and that's terribly important, and I'm sure that that's what most of the people watching the situation will be using as a measure of success as to whether we are responsive, et cetera, the very visible, obvious aspects of education. I think it's important, and I want to recognize that AID has several other components to the strategy that we have not really talked about today, which are the underlying systems that support all of this and that enable the Iraqi ministries and public authorities to regain some functionality to their systems. I urge people that are monitoring progress there not just to be dazzled by the bright lights and the things that attract the media attention, but underlying, let us say, a textbook program is a bunch of logistics systems, and warehousing systems, and transportation systems that people tend not to pay attention to, but which are crucial as to whether this is going to work. It's fine to train teachers, but somebody has to figure out how you're going to pay those teachers, the personnel systems, the appointment systems, the accreditation systems, all of these things. So look at the education system not just in terms of all of the things that attract the cameras, and the press, and everything in the short run, but also look at it as a national system with very difficult choices to be made about restructuring the whole society. These are choices the Iraqis have to make, but they've got to be done competently, they've got to be supported well, and they've got to be in place as soon as possible, otherwise these ad hoc arrangements initially are going to set up in concrete and be very difficult to deal with later. MS. PETERSON: Thank you, a very important point. MS. : [Off microphone.] [Inaudible.] MS. PETERSON: Right. The key is and a secure environment for these implementation efforts, but thank you very much. It's an important point. Well, we very much appreciate your input and interest in this area, and, again, we will provide information on future opportunities to discuss basic education--primary and secondary. As Assistant Administrator Fox mentioned earlier, there are a series of public consultations, and that schedule is on our web page. So we may see some of you next week as well. Thank you very much.
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