On the Scrap Heap at 13

By: Maggie Stanfield
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:23:56
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I recently spent a couple of months working with young people in Syria. These were kids between about 13 and 19 who were on training courses in the engineering and garment-making sectors. They are fantastic kids: polite, well mannered, articulate, helpful and fun. They don’t use dangerous drugs or have alcohol problems. They respect their parents, grandparents, many siblings, cousins and others who share their homes, and most are devoted Muslims to whom Allah is absolutely central.

This is a country in transition, moving from traditional Arabic autocracy towards democratic government. President Bashar al-Assad is determined to help reform the skills training system and to equip young people with the qualifications they need to get decent jobs and earn a reasonable income.

And of course the country’s own economy needs to train people up. The current system is perceived as so inflexible and so irrelevant to the real world of work that most employers feel it’s worthless. Many of the workshops in Syria’s 550 training organisations are constrained by old, out of date equipment, a lack of highly trained teachers and that stubborn perception that vocational training isn’t as important as academic education.

We sometimes take a very blinkered view of education. We think that unless our young people have gone through the rigours of a highly academic education and come out at the end of it with a degree, then we might as well dump them.

In Syria, this is a mentality that holds even more sway. Kids mostly go to state-run schools and are guaranteed the right to a free education up until the age of 17. So far, so good and so familiar.

Aged 13, children are streamed according to their exam results either into a high school with the sought after academic future – or they are essentially dumped. Since only about 12% go through university, that means an awful lot of young people are destined for the scrap heap. There are around 14.5m people in Syria, over 6m of them in Damascus. The unemployment level for these kids is well over 90%.

We need skilled trades people. We need people to build and wire houses, fit bathrooms, work as firemen and ambulance crews, make clothing and service the car.

With the Syrian Government, the European Commission is pumping some ?25m of funding into modernising the vocational education and training system. There is a team of international experts working over a three year period on creating new and more industry-relevant curricula, helping procure the right new equipment, training up the teachers so that they can better deliver the skills to others and creating an environment that will raise self-esteem and help young people feel more positive and enthusiastic.

Central to all this is making sure the project has the backing of industry, the relevant government departments, the parents, trainers, colleges and of course the young people themselves. The Deputy Prime Minister heads up the Project Steering Committee and is keen to stress how committed government is while the small but developing private sector (Some 70% of Syria’s working people are employed in the public sector) is enthusiastically embracing any initiative that might help their position.

It’s this side of the project that I’m responsible for. You can have the best scheme in the world but if no one actually knows it’s there, the impact will be very limited. I’m developing a website and starting up a regular magazine; running a poster competition and devising a corporate logo, writing and publishing a series of information leaflets about vocational training and trying to talk to groups about why it matters.

It may be a pebble tossed into the ocean but pebbles have ripples.

Maggie Stanfield is a UK-based journalist who travels widely, often working in politically unstable countries around the world. She writes extensively on business, politics, health and social issues. See http://www.writtenwords.co.uk.

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