Buying and Selling Education Reforms: The Approach to Educational Reform in the GCC

• In Event: Globalization and education in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries

Proposal

With the turn of the 21st century, the Arabian countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) were confronted with major challenges; mainly the unsustainable dependence on oil, high population growth, a rapidly growing domestic labour force, and a labour market that has been dependent upon migrant workers. This is against the backdrop of globalisation and the emergence of global governance as powerful influence on educational policy.

In response, the GCC countries launched transformational economic reforms that shared a common vision: diversification away from oil dependency to create ‘knowledge-based’ economies. A key means to achieve this was to rapidly reform the education system to achieve goals such as developing pupils’ ‘21st Century Skills’. A preliminary comparison of the educational reforms that were introduced across the region reveals a distinctive approach that is characterised by a strong degree of commonalities in defining the deficiencies of the education system and how it falls below expectations when compared with other nations on educational league tables such as TIMSS and PISA. The proposed reform initiatives were also based on identifying and transferring ‘international best practices’ or lessons from top performing education systems. More importantly, the educational reforms in all the GCC nations were justified, designed and implemented by private sector consultants harnessing the agendas of international organisations and utilising the tools of the Global Education Industry (GEI) under a distinctive governance model. Despite the limited success of this approach, the GCC countries have continued to use it as strategy for future reforms.

This paper identifies the critical features of the approach to systemic educational reform in the GCC and the central role within that of GEI. Subsequently, the analysis focuses on Bahrain’s educational reforms as an illustrative case to demonstrate how and why the GEI is involved in all stages of policymaking and delivery and their role in promoting a distinct process of policy borrowing which revolves around the transaction of products termed ‘best global practices’.

Author

• Maryam Mohamed, University College London - Institute of Education