Transcript: Education Update
June 24, 2003
MS. PETERSON: Good morning. I'm Dana Peterson with the Asia and Near East Bureau here at USAID, and I'm serving as the Deputy Reconstruction Advisor for Iraq. It is my pleasure to welcome you this morning to a public sector consultation on our education reconstruction efforts in Iraq. This is a session to highlight efforts to support basic education over the past seven weeks. Colleagues are here today who have been in Iraq and the region and can speak to very specific efforts and challenges in this critical sector.
Before detailing this sector, I would like to briefly describe our overall reconstruction portfolio. We presume that many of you have already visited USAID's website and looked at our overall reconstruction portfolio. As you know, USAID is undertaking vital work in the infrastructure sector, working to rehabilitate economically critical infrastructure, including the power sector, major transportation routes, water and sanitation systems, and important public buildings, including health clinics and school facilities.
We are addressing the delivery of a essential services, particularly health and education. And in this effort, we are working closely with the United Nations, including organizations such as UNICEF and WHO, as well as private sector partners. We are also helping to improve the efficiency and accountability of government, focused at the local level, and helping to expand economic opportunities throughout Iraq.
USAID has been undertaking reconstruction efforts, and meeting these objectives since around mid-April. The President declared the cessation of major combat just a little over 7 weeks ago.
In terms of setting a context for implementation efforts, work has been and will continue to be undertaken in close coordination with Coalition military forces. Security remains a concern and challenge for implementation. It is a highly fluid situation in country and our implementers have had to demonstrate considerable flexibility and adaptability.
Fundamental to our efforts if that we are supporting Iraqi-led initiatives and capacities and ensuring Iraqi ownership in all program interventions. My colleagues will speak in more depth to this as well.
In terms of USAID's structure in the field, USAID is operating like a mission in dozens of other countries around the world. Our Mission Director, Lou Luck, currently has approximately 30 staff focused on reconstruction as well as a number of staff working on humanitarian relief and transition initiatives through our Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, Office of Food for Peace, and Office of Transition Initiatives.
USAID is part or the overall Office of Coalition Provisional Authority, headed by Ambassador Paul Bremer, with USAID comprising approximately one-third overall reconstruction effort for the US government.
Before turning this consultation over to my colleagues, I apologize too. We have a colleague that we're trying to have brought in from Kuwait City to participate in this as well. We are having some technological challenges. Before turning this consultation over to my colleagues, I would like to highlight that this session is focused solely on implementation efforts to date in the education sector in Iraq.
We are not addressing Iraq reconstruction procurements in this session. In addition, this is not a session to speak to broader administration policy issues in Iraq. I would like to now introduce my colleagues, who are here with me today. Mr. Norm Rifkin is the Senior Education Advisor for Iraq with USAID. Mr. Frank Dahl is the Senior Program Director with Creative Associates International, USAID's private sector partner. And Mr. Frank Method with Research Triangle Institute, who is also working with Creative Associates in this endeavor.
I would also like to acknowledge the presence of Dr. William Evers, here in the audience, who will be going out to Iraq soon to serve as the Senior Education Advisor with the Ministry of Education. So for that, I would like to now turn it over to Mr. Norm Rifkin. Thank you very much.
MR. RIFKIN:: Thank you, Dana. And excuse the disruption. We have a colleague who is in Kuwait, who is the cognizant technical officer for the education program, and we're trying to bring her in on-line for the meeting.
I'd like to thank you all for your interest in USAID's activities in the education sector in Iraq. And over the next few minutes, I'll provide you with a very brief overview of our goals in education sector, some background on Iraq education and an overview of USAID activities in this sector.
Please bear in mind that ours is a short-term program which will cover the next ten to 14 months. Our program began in late April. Some of the activities didn't begin until late May, so we've only been at work for four to eight weeks, depending on the project. Nonetheless, we've made some very, very significant progress, and we'd like to tell you about that.
I'd like to introduce my colleagues. Our private sector colleagues, Frank Dahl, who is the Project Director for the RISE Project, working for Creative Associates; Frank Method, who is the Project Director for the Research Triangle Institute components of the RISE Project.
Our goal in Iraq in the education sector is very simple. In order to promote democratic and to promote stability and economic growth in Iraq, USAID will revitalize public education by addressing immediate needs, while at the same time laying the foundation for sustainable decentralized quality education at the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels.
Prior to the 1990s, Iraq arguably had one of the best education systems in the Middle East. They had achieved universal primary enrollment, they had reduced women's illiteracy considerably. But by the year 2000, primary enrollment had dropped to 76.3 percent and secondary enrollment to 33 percent. These are UNICEF statistics.
The quality is rather poor. Teacher motivation is poor. Drop-out rates are high. Secondary education has very little relevance to the labor market. Adult female illiteracy is extremely high at about 73 percent. There's been a sharp decline in access and quality. The schools are in double and triple shifts, due to a shortage of infrastructure and teachers, inadequate numbers of books, biased curriculum. About 8,000 school buildings are in need of renovation. There's a weak management information system. There is insufficient community involvement in schools. There is a lot of internal looting and destruction of records.
I'd like to outline our strategic approach, which has three parts. First, a high level of Iraqi participation, as Dana mentioned, is a fundamental principle and will be mainstreamed in all activities.
Second is our need to pay attention to urgent need. USAID's activities will focus upon urgent and immediate need. We want all schools to open and function normally by the beginning of the 2003-2004 school year. This will require renovated, safe, and reasonably equipped schools, a core of teachers who are paid and trained.
We will also lay foundations for the future. While attention is focused on immediate urgent needs, discreet activities will be undertaken to lay a foundation for medium and long-term reform. This includes the development of a short-term transition plan and also for a multi-year strategic plan.
I want to say what we will not do, because there are many things we will not do. Although we will get all schools opened by October, we will not build new schools. There is an immediate need for about 5,000 additional schools in Iraq. But these and many other needed interventions have to be part of a longer-term program.
We have four vehicles to deliver our education, goods, and services. The RISE Project, that is the Revitalization of Iraq Schools and Stabilization of Education, which is funded at $63 million; we have a grant to UNICEF, which is funded at $7 million; we have a grant to UNESCO, which is funded at $10 million; and a higher-education development activity, which is in process. Unfortunately, we will not be able to take substantive questions on the higher education activity, because it is a procurement that is in process, and questions will need to be addressed to our Office of Procurement in writing, so that all of the universities who have expressed an interest can benefit from those responses. We hope you understand.
In addition, USAID funds a number of other activities that impact positively upon education. The Iraq Reconstruction Contract, which is the Bechtel Contract. It calls for the renovation of some 6,000 schools. The Community Action Program, which involves NGOs, will meet the needs of communities and the improvement of their schools, among other things. Our local governance activity supplies grants to communities for the renovation of schools, among other things.
OTI and the CBs [ph] have renovated a large number of schools.
USAID's grant to UNICEF was awarded on April 8, 2003. The grant provides for promotion of a back-to-school campaign aimed at the approximately 25 percent of children who are currently not in primary school. The grant provides for rapid assessments to determine the availability of school materials, primary school materials, the establishment of temporary schools where none are functioning, training of teachers, establishment of accelerated learning programs, and the development of an education management system in Iraq.
USAID's contract with Creative Associates International was awarded on April 11, 2003, and provides very generally for technical assistance and strengthening of the Iraq Ministry of Education, increased enrollment and improved quality of primary and secondary education, including ensuring that classrooms have sufficient material by the start of the new year, particularly the secondary school classrooms, since UNICEF is taking care of the primary school needs: Desks, computers, paper, pencils.
Also this project will facilitate community involvement in order to develop programs that will help to bring students who have dropped out back into school, and will make grants to communities for the improvement of their schools.
USAID's grant to UNESCO was made on May 20, 2003. This grant will provide for math and science textbooks for the majority of Iraqi children. It will provide teacher training in the production of math and science textbooks. These books will be developed with an Iraqi advisory committee embedded within the MOE, Ministry of Education, that is. And all books will be printed in Iraq and distributed by the beginning of the new school year.
I mentioned that we have another activity to strengthen university partnerships. That's the higher education and development activity. This calls for partnerships between US and Iraqi institutions of higher learning to invigorate and modernize Iraq's institutions of higher learning. This program will facilitate the dispersal of development resources and technical expertise to Iraq's universities and technical colleges.
It will engage Iraqi higher education administrators faculty and students in the revitalization of Iraq's higher education system.
Just a note on some progress to date. UNICEF has already ordered the schools in a box for a million students and 28,000 teachers throughout the country, which provide learning and teaching materials. Recreation materials have been procured to alleviate stress among children and to enable them to regain a sense of healthy social interaction.
The identification of schools needing reconstruction is underway in different parts of the country with The Ministry of Education. UNICEF is taking the lead in this, certainly at the primary level, and we will collaborating with them through the RISE Program at the secondary level.
The Ministry of Education has been revitalized; salary payments have been made for some 70,000 teachers in the Bhagat [ph] area. I should mentioned that the Ministry of Education was reduced to rubble following the war, and much of the leadership in the Ministry is in the process of being replaced.
We have commissioned the printing and distribution of 5 million math and science textbooks. We've identified many communities, particularly in the Basra area, as recipients of grants. Some grants have already been initiated to Parent Teachers Associations. Student kits and school kits for the beginning of the school year are under procurement, they have been ordered, and a systemization of schools is underway.
This is just a gloss-over. My colleagues will give you more information on progress. Both of them have just returned from trips to Baghdad and can speak directly from their experience.
I would like to ask first Dr. Frank Dahl of Creative Associates to say a few words about his experience and the activities of the RISE Project, and after that he will turn it over to Frank Method of Research Triangle Institute.
Thank you.
MR. DAHL: Thank you very much.
Good morning. I see some familiar faces I think that were here last time I was here. This time, of course a little better informed because I've been in the field, embedded in the field for a while, back again this week at some point.
Basically we're in really good shape. We're moving fast after a somewhat slow beginning, due mainly I think to the need to coordinate in a very complex environment, a complex series of activities we've managed to get off the ground. We have teams embedded in the theatre of operation at the moment, in Basra, Al Hila, Baghdad, and we're moving up to Mosul. The aim is to basically set up hubs for our activities in a front office in Kuwait, which is a very small office; we've pulled out of Kuwait, and we're in country more; in Basra, in Al Hila, and in Baghdad and in Mosul. Why these four places? We've moved to these four places because everybody else that matters in this operation is moving to those four places, or USAID will have a presence in all of these field offices. And these are important hubs nationally. They were before the war; they are now. So it's important for us to be there.
We have start-up teams working at the moment in Basra, Kuwait, and Baghdad. We have our leadership that's moved lock, stock, and barrel to Baghdad, and is working very closely with USAID, the Ministry of Education, and other groups in Baghdad at this point. And then we're placing grant managers in at least three areas: Baghdad, Basra, Al Hila, because there's a tremendous demand for grants. Grants will not be an issue. The issue will be how we disperse grants and to whom, and what accountability? Because accountability is still a serious issue.
Everywhere, pilfering, theft against public property still exists, and is difficult to contain law and order. It's still an issue. Security is still an issue in many places.
I suppose our major constraints to date for moving people in and out and moving people quickly have been the ever-changing security situation, which is extremely fluid, and because it's fluid it's dangerous. Security situations you can live with. You can live with them if can categorize them and understand them. It's when you don't understand them and it becomes ad hoc insecurity that it becomes extremely dangerous. So we're very conscious of that and we certainly don't want body bags, and we certainly don't want to bring people back injured. So we're working very closely with USAID and everybody else who's very conscious of this situation, working very closely to guarantee security of people on the ground.
DOD training is important. Don't misunderstand me. But is a delay, because getting people to DOD training requires sometimes week of waiting and lists of people trying to get to the training. Then you have a week's training. Then you have to get people into the theatre of operations after that.
So that still is a delay. And then one very unexpected delay that has upset us very much is that we've been trying to move 12 Iraqis. We've gone with a strategy that basically prioritizes the use of Iraqis, and works very closely with Iraqis. That was part of our program design from the very beginning.
Moving these Iraqis in to Iraq has been extremely difficult, especially via Kuwait, because they can't get Kuwaiti visas. So we took the law into our own hands and flew them in from Amman and snuck them in across the Jordanian border, which is much easier. Now they're in country working with us. But these are 12 highly qualified and trained Iraqis who are both American, Canadian and British by nationality, as well as Iraqis, and they're working extremely well with us on the ground already. Especially on the grants component in Basra and on the inventory. The inventory that was mentioned is up and going.
We split our inventory team into three teams: South, north, and central. And they're out there in 13 vehicles now doing an inventory of secondary schools under sometimes very trying conditions. The team is extremely well organized, and it's feeding back at the data as it gets to schools, to a center point and then to the HIC in Basra. The HIC is the Humanitarian Information Center that's been set up in Basra that is extremely competent and very well organized. And so we're working very closely with the HIC. HIC, of course, feeds information to all the other agencies that have sponsored the setting up of the HIC, basically.
Grants. There's been a tremendous demand, overwhelming demand, in the Basra area for grants. But then we're in competition with other agencies, other colleagues, other partnerships, other organizations, international NGOs as well. So we have to be very careful not to duplicate our efforts, and that is now being coordinated very carefully so that there isn't duplication. But we're moving to the Misan and Al Hila area now, too, with grants. And there's a demand for grants there too.
I think we're about to place or have placed 20, when I last heard, grants, and more are coming. These grants range at the moment by agreement because we're into a pilot phase on grant distribution, for secondary and primary schools, for refurbishment of these schools. Ranging from $10,000 to $20,000. We have to cover the whole country with the amount of money that we have, which is about $8 million for grants. And we hope to be able to do that in an even way, where the need is most apparent and where the priority is most apparent.
We're coordinating most of our efforts very closely with CMOC or military groups, both UK and US. The UK groups have been extremely helpful in the Basra area, and we're working very closely with the CMOC group on identification of schools and other projects that we are trying to coordinate with them on.
There is a close coordination between the RISE project and the Governance Project, which is the Peril Project, which is being led by RTI. They have a grants component to schools in the Basra area and beyond, and we're trying to make sure that we coordinate our efforts very carefully with that group, as well. That is USAID money and USAID sponsored as well.
The accelerated learning component, which is an extremely important part of what we do we're about to launch forth on. We've designed a program that is captivating. It's in five modalities, and we will pilot five different types of interventions, probably in five separate governants. We're now looking for where to put these, and we will train local teachers to push out-of-school children, mainly youth, through the system, where they will get two years' worth of education in one year in an attempt to be able to re-integrate them back into the schooling system. Identifying these groups and where we are going to do, this is taking more time than we thought, but we're working on that at the moment.
Teacher training is going to kick in a little later. The people who are going to be doing teacher training with us are American University here in Washington, D.C., and the two Iraqi NGOs that are part of our team, who are going to work with us in the training of 64,000 teachers, hopefully. It's not training in the conventional sense, but it's an introduction to 64,000 teachers of new teaching methods and ideas in an attempt to break the stranglehold that is now dominating the educational system, where traditional methods predominate, and where teacher-centered approaches are dominant. We're trying to break that vicious cycle, much in the way that UNICEF tried to do it over the last few years. I was very instrumental in that when we launched forth on a global education reform effort, where we basically focused on 40 schools and did a very radical thing in 40 schools to turn schools upside-down and get teachers to look at teaching in a very different and new way. Child-centered approaches, discovery learning approaches, and so on and so forth.
A similar attempt will be made to introduce a large number of teachers to these new methodologies in the hope that then following educational reform, which is more profound and more nationwide, coming from the Ministry itself, we'll be able to take that wave that we will have started and run with it, and bring about a fundamental reform in way the teachers behave in classrooms, and classroom activities are organized, and conducted.
Distribution of educational materials is coming along extremely well. Our strategy is to work at the governant level with governant offices, and to use their networks to distribute materials to schools. We're identifying warehouses in the 18 governants. Materials are going to come in from overseas via Kuwait and Basra to these 18 governant warehouses, and then the warehouses will be used to distribute materials down to the school level.
We have teams of people now working on that with AMEG [ph], a contractor for the purchase of materials. And we will be purchasing 1.2 million student kits, which have been carefully worked out to reflect needs, classroom level needs in Iraq, and about 4,000 school kits. These school kits are going to go largely to secondary schools.
We're standing by probably to meet the needs of primary schools and primary school teachers, as children if required. But the Japanese with a very large grant are working with UNICEF to cover that. So the feeling, and I think this is the right approach, the feeling was that we didn't want to duplicate their effort, and so we separated the two efforts, and we will focus on secondary schools by and large. It makes a great deal of sense to do that.
The needs are great, the demand is high, time is short, and we're moving as fast as we can move under these given conditions. And I think things are very exciting at the moment. Things are moving so fast that from here it's extremely difficult to keep up with them. And no matter how good a conductor you are, it's important for the conductor to get down into the orchestra and play a few instruments from time to time to know what's going on. And I'll be out there again on Thursday to do a quick nationwide flit to all of the centers that we're setting up, ending up in Baghdad to work with Ministry of Education to get things moving there.
We have embedded at the Ministry as from last week and this weekend four Creative Associates educators who are working with the Ministry. And I will leave Frank Method to explain to you what RTI strategy is for long-term work in the Ministry, because they will be following up to work with the Ministry on Program Policy and systemic issues that we need to address.
Reconstruction is the name of the game. And basic reconstruction of a destroyed ministry is probably the name of the game. There's nothing elaborate or fancy or complex about this. We just need to get a ministry up and going again, and get people working again. And that is difficult enough under these given conditions.
We are in addition looking at governants, focal points at the local level, that's governant-directed general offices, as focal points for any work that we're going to do at the governant level, because that at a decentralized level works quite well, and did work quite well previously. We're trying to strengthen those modes, and the selection of director generals is going to be a crucial issue that needs to be addressed at the ministry level. Because the right people in governant offices will make a very big difference as to how we impact what we're trying to do at the governant level, and community level in schools.
Briefly, I'm proud to be part of this effort. It's been a conscience-driven ride for some of us. But it's extremely well worth doing, and despite the difficulties, I hope we will succeed in leaving something very positive for Iraqi children and the Iraqi nation, and hopefully those who are back-stopping us at higher levels will backstop us with a sound strong democratic process that will follow whatever efforts we're trying to do at the moment to get schooling going again.
Thanks. Thanks for your patience. If there are any questions, we'll take questions later. Thank you.
MR. METHOD: Frank has given an excellent introduction to what we're doing. I am responsible for the component that's working with the Ministry and the national systems to get the Ministry functioning to address issues of national policy and to coordinate that with the other elements going on. RTI will be putting four, probably five long-term people out there working with the Ministry, and a team of shorter-term specialists, specialized advisors. I've just been out there, doing the initial set-up work, and I'll be going back next week with a team of short-term advisors to begin to get some of the initial priority tasks moving forward.
There really are three major tasks. We can break it down into more detail as we get into it. But three major tasks. One is that the ORHA [ph] in Baghdad needs to somehow find a way to get a building, to get a budget going forward, to get other decisions as to who is going to be intrusted with interim authority for the Ministry. That's their role; we are helping to give advice on them, but basically it's their call on those issues.
First priority for delivery is some kind of a transitional strategy for the Ministry to get it up and running as soon as possible, to set some priorities for what kinds of capacity building need to be accomplished now. And on a longer-term basis, we will be working over the next year to begin to both conceptualize and put down on paper, but also to begin to get the initial work going on a longer-term process of education reform, qualitative improvement, substantive dialogue with the various stakeholders in Iraq about where they want to go with education, how education begins to be a driver for where they want to go as a nation.
It's terribly important to understand that these issue are not just technocratic issues of education, craftsmanship. These are deep questions about the nature of Iraq, who's in charge, who's making decisions, what does democracy really mean when you translate it into practice, what is the new structure of the economy, et cetera. These are issues that need to be addressed with a sense of urgency, but they also cannot be rushed. They need to be dealt with in very careful, sensitive, respectful dialogue with the Iraqis.
And at the end of the day, it's going to Iraqis that are going to be making these decisions in running their country. So we are very conscious of that, and we have to find a proper balance between dealing with the urgent short-term needs to get some things moving, get this thing standing up again, but also beginning to work as quickly as possible and as respectfully as possible with the Iraqis that are going to have to carry this forward longer term.
Frank Dahl mentioned the destruction of the Ministry. It's important to understand that the Ministry isn't just a set of buildings. It's a set of national systems, with national systems of authority, and reporting relationships, et cetera. The buildings are actually rather easier to bring back on line than are these other systems. What was destroyed was also your personnel systems. Your information systems. Your student record systems. Your examination records. And trying to figure out how you get an education system operating again without these systems is a very difficult set of issues.
There are, I think, four priority areas short-term, one of which is finance and budgeting. These issues are beginning to be addressed right now. There is a draft budget being circulated. There will be decisions made on that. There is a donors' conference in New York at present, that is trying to see who else can contribute to that. That needs to translate into some way to pay teachers. It's very difficult that pay teachers when you're not certain of your teacher rolls. But they are doing that, working with intermediaries. There's a small set of Iraqi, mainly people that have come back from diaspora rolls, but also some people that have been there all along. They're beginning to work with the ORHA Team, that are points of contact, that can be provide useful advice as to who to talk to, who to trust, what information to trust. And they sort this out as best they can.
So they are getting some interim short-term payments out there. But the key issue of longer term is to rebuild that personnel system. It takes very difficult issues, tricky issues of teacher certification, of registration, or who appoints teachers, who fires teachers, who appoints headmasters, who removes headmasters. All of these issues needs to be addressed.
The information system needs go be rebuilt. And what's important here is not just rebuilding the information system, but rebuilding a system of management that relies upon information, that relies upon objective criteria for making decisions, rather than just political influence and executive decision-making. You can run an education system just by having somebody at the top that just gets up in the morning and decides what they want to do. And you give orders and people jump to it, and get it done.
But that's not the kind of education system that we need built. Because again, rebuilding the education system is a matter of rebuilding systems of dialogue, the reporting of analysis, of transparency, and ultimately of governance in the nature of the larger society.
So, finance, personnel systems, information systems that relate to those administrative and management systems. Frank talked about what's being done with the schools to bet the material into the schools. Furniture, basic text materials, other kinds of things.
This is all actually going pretty well, with a lot of energy and people really finding ad hoc ways to get that done. Longer term, what needs to be done is less ad hoc and more systematic. We need to talk about warehouse systems, and inventory systems, and patrol systems, and ways to replenish these on a longer-term basis, to budget for them, et cetera. All of this needs to be done.
These are the priorities, relatively short-term. Short-term is three, six months, something like that. Longer-term, other issues of policy reform, and qualitative improvement begin to come into the picture. These are not--and it's really important to understand this--these are not the priority short-term. Short-term the priorities, I get the Ministry functioning again, get these basic systems functioning again.
And then as you begin to have the rocky entities that you can work with, you begin to engage in dialogue, you begin to engage in comparative systems. You begin to get some key people out to look at other at other systems in the region. Many of these people were highly regarded as some of the best technically trained people in the region, as recently as a decade ago. But they haven't been out of Iraq since. They haven't had a chance to look at what's been happening elsewhere. And they need to get out and look at that.
Right next door in Jordan you have some very high quality reforms. It's important to look at that. It's important to talk to see what kind of institutional partnership they might have.
I'm going to leave for questions some of what the issues of policy might be. There clearly are issues of curriculum, there are issues of governance and administrative structure, language, how schools are run, school by school, how does the headmaster deal with it. A couple of things that I would emphasize here. Moving the teaching and the education profession from being civil servants taking orders as bureaucrats from the top, to being a much community of people that are self-actualizing and self-referencing, and building of professional standards is a very major reform.
There's a lot of discussion about decentralization that's going to have to be looked at longer term. Just to emphasize just how difficult this is and how large a task it is, decentralizing, let us say, to the district level, Iraq has 18 governants, 21 administrative districts. Each of those districts is something like a million people. That means something like 200, 250 thousand school children. That means 10 or 12 thousand professional educators
This is a huge unit. This is for comparison almost twice the running of the D.C. Schools System. Decentralization to that level still leaves you with 20-25 very large-scale problems to deal with. You break it down further than that and you have--you don't do that casually, you don't do that quickly, you don't do that without deep dialogue. So that's going to be the task longer term.
I hope I made that point that this has to be done carefully and respectfully and systematically, and it has to be done in close consultation with the Iraqis.
The last point just in terms of the partnership. We are putting out a very small number of people out there to work with this. This set of people can't be viewed as the people who are going to do all the work. They've got to be viewed as catalysts, as people that provide some markers and some sense of direction to it, and it's got to be done as part of broad partnership with lots of actors. And not just education actors. It relates to governance, it relates that finance, it relates to the economy, it relates to political leadership, and all of this all the way across.
So, figuring out how you relate education reform at the policy level as well as in the practice to this broad sense of partnership is going to be a big part of the agenda. Right now, we have excellent partnership, people working in very difficult circumstances, working very hard.
One point I'd like to make. I was very impressed with the technical skills of the military. The units that we interacted with that were doing school assessments were working extremely hard in very difficult circumstances. And I was very positively impressed with the technical quality of the work they were doing. I did not expect to find that. I expected to find people ad hoc in this and doing the best they can, but without a whole lot of professional training on that.
And I was very impressed with the technical quality of the assessments, the skill with which they were looking not just at structure, but at systems, at networking and support systems for those schools. So that put us in a better shape on those kinds of issues than I expected to find. We still have those issues of national systems that need to be built to give some structure and sense of direction to those things that are going on on the ground. But things are going on the ground, and you should be confident about that. We have work to do.
Thanks.
MS. PETERSON: Thank you, Frank.
Jessica? Hi. Would you like to say a few words as well?
MS. : [Inaudible.]
MS. PETERSON: Jessica, I apologize. Can you start over again, please? We're having challenges with the audio system here.
MS. : First of all it's a pleasure to be with all of you today, and it's very nice to hear the voices of some colleagues back in Washington. I think that you have all laid out a very clear and broad picture of what it is we're trying to accomplish here in education. So I am just going to add a few things, and pardon me if I repeat a few points. I didn't hear the exact beginning of this session. So, again, pardon me if I repeat.
It's important to note and to reiterate what Norman Rifkin was saying, that really our activities and our actions are dictated by four main pillars: We are supporting Iraqi-led initiatives; we are addressing urgent needs; we are doing this while we lay foundations for future; and also very important is that we're doing in coordination with existing partners at the ground level.
Frank Method mentioned military, and the excellent work they are doing in the sector, not only gathering data but also taking it a step further and analyzing the data, and really sharing it with all key players, in order to build upon experiences that are already ongoing. These four pillars really dictate where we move, what we support, and how we move forward.
Having said that, I think Frank Dahl clearly said, "We're moving, we've started. There's a lot going on at the ground level, both through our contracts and through our grants."
Now I want to point to the issue of security. That continues to be an issue. We are addressing it with military in the different regions that we are beginning our work, because it really has a direct bearing on how we can mobilize. This is an issue that USAID is addressing very seriously, because it is something that we are hoping can be addressed before we have any incidents.
Having said that, we are working very closely with the military, and we're working under a framework that provides protection through their mechanisms. In terms of coordination, we are trying to coordinate very closely, as I said, with military, with civil affairs in particular, with our UN partners, and including UNICEF of course, UNESCO, the different agencies; and trying to centralize all of this coordination in the UN HIC. The United Nations Humanitarian Information Center. And this is really dictating a lot of the information that we are collecting and a lot of the activities that we are engaging in.
Because one of the issues that also Frank Dahl is duplication. We are hoping and trying very hard to lay out plans to carry one actions and to coordinate this with our other partners, many of which have already been on the ground; and many of which are also working alongside our efforts.
I also wanted to mention that the systematization and inventory exercise that RISE is now engaging in is, as Frank said, started. It's moving forth. And we have difficult NGOs and difficult UN partners that are really liaising with us. Because the information that RISE was providing is also very informative for them, and it's really yielding a lot of decision-making potential for them as well.
One of the interesting elements of this exercise is that it also provides for the identification and the distribution of grants. So in the next couple of weeks, RISE should in fact be distributing a considerable number of grants as it moves north. This exercise will begin in Basra and will move its way northward. At the same time, we have UNICEF, who is sponsoring end-of-the-year exams. We have supported the effort, and currently there are conversations in terms of the logistics. In some cases this has already started, but here again Iraqis have expressed concern over security issues.
We have a meeting in the next couple of days where some of these issues will be addressed. The military is working very, very closely with UNICEF and the MOE to make this happen. And this is an incredibly important activity for Iraqis themselves, students and parents. And this is something that we are hoping to conclude by the middle of next month.
In terms of UNESCO, I believe Norm mentioned this. The advisory committee is under constitution. It will be Iraqi-led with Iraqi participation. And this is part of the MOE overall process, providing adequate textbooks for the school year. I am not going to comment on our HEAD [ph] which is under procurement, and again we reiterate that OP is ready to answer any questions you may have to that effect.
I would like to quickly point out that we are working under very difficult circumstances, but there is a great team out here with out contractors and our UN agencies and our NGOs that are really doing some very good work.
Here in Iraq, and in Washington, education is really working as a team. What I mean by that is that we have Dorothy Mazaka working in Baghdad as our advisor to the Education Ministry. We have Norm Rifkin, as you know, as your senior education advisor, who comes to the region and back to Washington. And I'm here as general development officer and CPO to our education activities.
So really what we are trying to do is to coordinate and include the different perspectives that we have here, that we have in Washington, and that we have in the different areas, and stakeholders, so that in fact our education program works in line with these interests, but always favoring of course the Iraqi-led response to what they consider important, and to what they consider we should support.
I think that that is something that is important and that we're doing throughout everything we engage in.
MS. PETERSON: Thank you, Jessica. Thank you very much. We'd like to actually open it up to questions now. Can you still hear me, Jessica?
MS. : I can bearly hear you.
MS. PETERSON: Okay. I'm sorry. The technology is challenging. But we'll do what we can.
I wanted to clarify a couple of points before we open this up to questions. There has been reference by some of my colleagues to ORHA, which was known as The Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Affairs, that had been headed by General Jay Garner. That structure is now called The Office of Coalition Provisional Authority, that is headed by Ambassador Paul Bremer. So I just wanted to clarify in terms of use of acronyms and what that entailed.
There has also been reference to this request for applications for our higher education partnerships. That is a full and open competition that requests for applications is available on our web page. And again, if there are any questions on that application, you can submit those questions to our Office of Procurement, and they can response to those. So just clarifying that this session we're not addressing that specific solicitation.
And in addition when Norm referenced various figures for our implementation, those are estimates at this point in time. Those are rough figures. But given the fluid situation and as we gather more information in the field in that, just want to highlight that those are estimates at this point in time, in some form or another.
So given that we are broadcasting live o the web, we would request that you please speak into the microphone, if you have questions, so that those who are not physically present can still hear.
So if anyone has questions, please.
Jessica?
MS. : Yes, I'm here.
MS. PETERSON: Can you hear better now?
MS. : I can.
MS. PETERSON: Okay good. Yes please.
QUESTION: Hi. I'm Lynn Elin [ph] with the Washington Kurdish Institute. And while the focus is on central and southern Iraq here, I was wondering how you interact with northern Iraq, since, for people who don't know, the Kurds have an autonomous region up there and there are two regional governments, each of which has its own ministry of education and health and that sort of thing. And they have their own system. And they have been sort of isolated by Saddam Hussein over the years. And I was wondering how if any of this money is getting up there. And if it, how are you relating to their systems, which must be different than the rest of the country? Or are you just trying to lump it all together? How is that working?
MS. PETERSON: Okay, if I could have colleagues speak to that?
MS. : Would you like me to answer the question?
MR. : Would you like to try and do that, Jessica? Let's go ahead and I'll follow whatever it is that you have to say first. Okay?
MS. : Thank you.
MR. : Go ahead.
MS. : Certainly all of our programs are nationwide, and that includes north, central, heartland, and south. We have currently a colleague, a US direct higher foreign service officer, based in Mosul. He is the USAID coordinator for the region, and he is in fact organizing all of the activities in the north. Contractors go through him in order to first set up logistically and then plan their program.
As we speak, the RISE activity, systematization and inventory, is going to be traveling to Mosul in order to begin activities there. During this systemization and inventory, they will in fact identify some of the issues that you are mentioning, and make them operative in terms of how will they proceed based on these different frameworks existing there.
Nonetheless, we are, as I said: One, collecting data, two, distributing grants, and three, including the north in everything that we are doing. As a matter of fact, that includes not just RISE but also our grants. I don't know, Frank, if you would like to add something to that.
MR. : Jessica, that was a good answer, but I'll just add a couple of things.
From the RISE point of view, of course we are giving equal priority to the north as we are to the south. But of course the south was easier to get to and permissive, and the reason we started in the south was that strategically it was easier for us to do that. But we do aim to open an office very shortly in Mosul, and we'll be working very closely with the Kurdish enclave.
AU has a longstanding tradition of work with the Kurds in the north, and I too. I have worked on Kurdish educational reforms with both ministries in Kurdistan, so I know the situation. So I know the situation. And we're pushing to have a presence there, but of course we have to cover the whole of the country, so we have to give equal priority to all aspects. And we're not underrating or emphasizing any one part. It's just a logistical task and challenge at the moment to get to every point all at once.
MS. : Can I point out, Mosul is not in an autonomous region. It's not in what's considered Iraqi Kurdistan. Is there some reason why you picked Mosul over--
MR. : Yes. Mosul is an operative center, and from the logistical point of view, Mosul is better for us to be able to go slightly south of Mosul and better for us to go slightly north of Mosul. If we embed ourselves in Arveel, Solomonia, and any of these other places that I know very well, it's going to be much more difficult for us to do what we have to do, which is to segment between Baghdad and the Kurdish enclave. We have to do all of that. So Mosul would be logically and I think strategically the best place to put an office. That's why we're there.
QUESTION: Thank you.
MS. : If I can also add something to that, OCEA is headquartered there. USAID therefore has to have an office with OCPA, and this was determined because or logistical accessibility; hence our contractors follow. And also important that note is that while the exercise begins in Basra and moves north, in the case of Mosul, there's a special team that is going to fly up to Mosul simultaneous to the launch in Basra. So I effect it's a two-prong approach moving towards Basra, beginning from the north and the south and converging in the center of Iraq.
MR. : Thank you.
QUESTION: I'm Mark Engman. I work with Christian Children's Fund, and I'd just like to thank you for having us here and thank our two Franks for coming in today. I don't have to say this, but just urge you to be very careful when you go back to Iraq, and take care of your safety.
I'd like to take the liberty to just ask two quick questions. You talked a lot about training for both teachers and for community groups, parent teachers associations. Obviously for children, after years of sanctions and conflict, there's going to be a lot of trauma and psychosocial effects. I'm wondering if your training programs have some basic components deal on a community level, not a psychological basis, but on a community level, to deal with those psychosocial effects. That's number one.
And then number two, just real quick. I talked a lot about partnership and the number of NGOs working in the field. I'd just like to ask the two contractors on a field level, what processes do you have in place to communicate with the broader NGO community, US and otherwise, operating in the region? Thank you.
MR. : Jessica, would you like to comment on that, before I comment?
MS. : Sure.
MR. : Go ahead.
MS. : The first question you asked deals with psychosocial. Currently USAID is supporting UNICEF in this regard, and UNICEF, who has a track record on the subject, on this type of methodology, is taking the lead on that. At the same time, there are NGOs at the ground level that are addressing this issue.
Now, in terms of how we are coordinating, I can speak of Basra and I can speak of Baghdad. The UN is doing a good job in getting people together. Every day, for example, in Basra, there's a 5:00 meeting where all implementing partners in the south, its representation, based in Basra, meet. And it's a time to basically share what you're doing, identify any security incidents, and then have side meetings, if you will, that address the more operative issues and set interventions.
And one of the operational ways that this being organized is through the United Nations Humanitarian Information Center, where the information in terms of who is doing what, where, is fed to the system, so that at the end of the day, when I look, for example, at a map that has schools on the map, we will be able to determine these schools, Save the Children is helping them with refurbishment. These other schools, RISE is helping them. These other schools, is RTI, our governance grants. These other schools, et cetera.
Now, while that is still in the making and that is what the UN HIC is now organizing in terms of protocol for data gathering and protocols for data collection and repositioning, if you will, that is something that is ongoing. There is currently meetings that are held every day. And so this is the way that we're organizing.
In terms of USAID for education, we're also holding our very specific meetings with NGOs simply to, again, build upon existing actions and existing activities in order to really not duplicate what has been taking place, but really build upon it.
MR. : Jessica, thank you.
Just to add to that, it was an excellent response, is that we are planning to incorporate into our accelerated learning approach one pilot element that will take UNICEF's life skills modules, which include trauma amelioration element that we are going to probably try and build into our accelerated learning strategy. But we are very much experimenting with different accelerated learning approaches. And one of them will have a component of what it is that you asked for in your question.
The issue of networking with NGOs is paramount in the way that we're going to organize our four regional country offices. And our managers in the field are going to be tasked with making those contacts with NGOs, local NGOs. There aren't many local NGOs, but there are a number of international NGOs already working on the ground. And a map, as suggested by Jessica, is probably the only way to go. We do have map out everything that we're doing and make sure that we don't duplicate our efforts, and that we coordinate our efforts with a huge number of actors that are on the field.
They're not just US actors now, but they are European actors of various sorts, a whole host of European international NGOs. And then there will be others coming in soon, as well.
I had a phone call yesterday from the second secretary of the Ukrainian embassy here in Washington, requesting a meeting with us to discuss just that. Because Ukraine is probably going to throw something into the pot as well. And there are a number of partners that are talking about coming into Iraq to help on reconstruction and humanitarian effort to field.
Thanks.
MR. METHOD: Just a very quick addition to that. You raised very good questions about the process for coordination amongst the various actors, including the NGOs. One of the decisions that's already been made on the RISE is the scale back some of the assessment work that we were planning to do, judging that many other groups are already doing most of that, and our priorities should shift more to try to coordinate that and make sense of it. That's a kind of learning as you go and adjusting to the changing situation.
The other point I wanted to make is that longer term, one of the policy issues and strategy issues that will have to be addressed is: What is the role of Iraqi NGOs? Iraq has little tradition, legal or otherwise, of civil society entities being involved in much of anything. And there are real questions as to how you begin to nurture that kind of an environment. That's a very fundamental assumption of democratic and open society. But exactly how move from where we are now to that new situation is something we need to talk about.
And it may very well include PTAs and similar entities as a starting point.
QUESTION: Thank you.
QUESTION: Yes, hello. I'm Marianne Walker. I'm with Michigan State University, and I want to thank you both for this assessment. This is tremendously helpful in understanding the ground situation.
My question is more related to, you mentioned the Iraqi diaspora that you returned back there from, Canadian, American, and British diaspora. I wanted to ask you if you could address what progress is being made with the Iraqi higher education leadership in this new Iraq. Could you talk for a minute about some of the new developments?
MS. PETERSON: Jessica, are you in a position that speak to that?
MS. : I didn't quite hear the last part of that question. Could you please repeat?
MS. PETERSON: Yes, a woman from Michigan State University is interested in what developments, what progress is being made in working with Iraqi representatives from institutions of higher learning. Can you hear that? I'm sorry.
MS. : I certainly could hear that. And I think that I should defer that question. I'm afraid that it deals with HEAD, and that's the information that I have very specific of HEAD. And I don't think we're in a position to comment right now. Suffice it to say that the higher education institutions in Iraq are eager to get involved in programs and projects. The OCPA has a responsible in charge of higher education, and he's very engaged in visiting and dialoguing with the different institutions in the country, and that there is a lot of room and initiatives coming from them to engage in a process of institutional capacity building and reconstruction in their country.
MS. PETERSON: Thank you, Jessica.
QUESTION: I'm Mya Latinski [ph] from the Civic Education Project. I have a political question about people and about books. How do you go about choosing and evaluating the people you work with? Especially in the Ministry?
And two, who's writing books? Who's evaluating them? For example, high school textbooks.
And I suppose a related question to the previous one is, in the people section, how to you expect the emigres to fit in? And again, you know we've had these experiences across the post-Communist world where it doesn't always run very smoothly, and what sort of problems are you anticipating? And how are you going about solving them?
MS. PETERSON: Okay. Good. Jessica, can you speak somewhat to some of the textbook curriculum issues in the multilateral context? You heard the three questions?
MS. : I heard the question on how do you determine [Inaudible] appropriate textbooks, and how is the diaspora going to participate in this effort. Is that what I heard? Is that correct?
MS. PETERSON: Yes. And then how we determine our partners within the Ministry. How we're choosing the individuals with whom we're working.
MS. : Currently there is under discussion the process by which textbooks will be made available to students for the beginning of the new school year. One of the driving concepts behind that is that it needs to be a committee that determines what materials are correct or appropriate for children. This committee is to be made up of equal representation of the different Iraqi ethnic groups that exist. And so I, in order to response, How are determining the participation, it's really a representative sample of the different groups and the different ethnicities in order to have Iraqis making that determination. This is now under discussion, and this is something that we hope will come to a resolution shortly. However that is the prime factor that is determining the discussion and the debate, that it be Iraqi-led and that it be equal Iraqi representation.
At the same time in terms of how the diaspora will feed into that, I cannot answer that question right now. I don't know the answer.
MS. PETERSON: Do any of my colleagues want to add to that?
MR. : Yes.
MS. PETERSON: Okay.
MR. : Those are excellent questions, by the way. Right to the core of some of the issues. I think Jessica probably gave you some very good answers. I think we don't know how to answer some of those questions. But as far as our teams are concerned, and we have of course diaspora Iraqis on board. And there are field people. They're qualified and trained educators, who have been retrained by us to do the jobs that we need to do in the field, and they're going to be working at the field level. So they're probably not likely to impact, immediately at least, policy.
The policy level debate and discussion of course depends on so many variables. But I would say one variable is to get a ministry up and going at all. I mean there's nothing there at the moment. There are a few senior people from the ministry, who still are standing around and waiting to be told what to do, as they were always told what to do in the Baathist regime. Some of them are good, some of them as less good. Some of them are technically extremely well qualified with degrees from a variety of foreign venues, including the UK, Europe, Canada, and the U.S., and can do good jobs, but are waiting to be led to do that.
It's going to be I think complex and problematic to sort all that out. But I believe that a lot of people are giving it some thought and something is happening at the moment. I'm not, because I haven't been back to Baghdad recently, of affairs to exactly what's happening at this point with respect to that. So I can't really comment in detail, but I expect a lot has been happening since I was last there, and I'll be there again this week at some point. Hopefully, in Shala [Inaudible] at the end of the week.
But it was an excellent set of questions that you asked. Good questions. Thank you.
MR. : I just wanted to point out relative to that last question, that they use the phrase, "Standing up to the ministates." This is a euphemism for rebuilding the senior personnel at the Ministry. This was never a task that AID undertook. We've become involved in that, because the AID team leader has been working very closely with the organization that has been charged with that task. But there are a variety of people, this is a very political issue, and there are variety of people who've been involved in that.
I pointed out earlier that Bill Evers is with us. I don't know, Bill, if you want to talk to this question. But I think this is something you'll probably be involved with.
MR. EVERS: I'm Bill Evers, and I'm going to be one of the--
MS. PETERSON: I'm sorry, Dr. Evers, just for the benefit of those who cannot physically be here, would you be able to speak into a microphone, either here or there? I apologize for the layout here. Thank you.
MR. EVERS: Just to introduce myself, I'm Bill Evers, and I want to introduce a colleague, and I'm going to make him stand up too. This is Jim Nelson. Jim is going to be joining me as another senior advisor working on education. And we hope to be in Baghdad as soon as we can. And I think at this time I'm not going to really go into the political aspects of this, but everybody's right in saying this is important and a central part of our task when we're there. Thanks.
MS. PETERSON: Thank you, Dr. Evers. Thank you for your patience. Please?
QUESTION: My name is Henna Makia [ph] from the IRDC. I wanted to ask a question. Norm talked about the female illiteracy in Iraq, the adult female literacy. If there's 73 percent, I think you used that figure, what strategies are being done to look at that element and part of the training for children? Because my comment is, if you go through the women, not only do you hit the issues of democracy, and literacy, but you also hit the issues of access to schooling and reducing dropout rate. So there are, as I understand it, big projects underway to deal with that. So is USAID involved in any of those, or RISE?
That's one question. Then the second question is to do with the budget. Is any of the budget for Food for Oil being used in education? And also what of the national budget is used for education? Those are the two questions.
MS. PETERSON: Okay, and on the second question, and Jessica, maybe you can speak more to this as well, but in terms of USAID's programs, we are implementing through appropriated funds, through congressionally appropriated funds. So, Norm, would you like to address the first question, please?
MR. RIFKIN:: Just to tell you that a committee has recently been organized on the entire subject of gender. Our education program was targeted toward the formal school system, targeted toward children, and also higher education. But we recognized that the issue of adult illiteracy is terribly important, and there are some people meeting on this to come up with some recommendations.
If there's anything that you would care to contribute to this, if there is anything that you would like to give us, some suggestions you'd like to make, that would be most welcome.
QUESTION: Good morning. I'm Udo Schultz [ph]. I represent Savitz [ph] Educational Systems, Inc. Thank you for putting on this informative meeting. It's very interesting. Our organization operates 28 private schools. Eight of those here in this country, actually seven of those are public schools that we manage. But we also manage schools, private schools, international schools in 11 other countries, most of them in the Middle East: Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, UAE, Pakistan, and so forth. My QUESTION: Does the new ministry also govern and get involved with private education and primarily international education?
[Inaudible.]
MS. PETERSON: Right. Jessica? Are you still here? So if you want to respond too, Frank will address what was in the past system. Thank you.
MR. : I was looking at precisely that. When I went to look at about four schools in Baghdad recently, just to get a rough idea of where things were, from when I was last there, and my last official trip for UNICEF to the region was November 2000 basically, so things that happened between that period of time.
I went to a private girls school, 'private.' Private in the sense that parents make a contribution to the education of their children. But it's not substantial. It's about 50,000 Iraqi denars a year for those who can afford it and less for those who can't afford it. I was told very clearly by a head mistress who was very erudite and fluent in English. By the way, all of her pupils also spoke fluent English. So a dialogue was excellent, a very bright group of girls overwhelmed us with questions, and discussed all sorts of things with us.
But they said that basically the notion of the private school had disappeared for all intents and purposes. But lots of the elite schools, and that used to be the American school, the Baghdad girls school used to be what was called the American Community School before. That is now being run as a quasi-private institution with parents making contributions if they can afford the contributions. It's a little better endowed than other schools, but it also looked terribly run down. So the notion of private education as such doesn't exist at this moment in Iraq, but I'm sure that it will bounce back very quickly.
I think there's a demand for private education, and I think a lot of Iraqi educators probably have an eye on that ball and would probably like to start something. If you look at the Middle East as a whole, and I've been working in 22 Middle Eastern countries for seven years on educational issues for UNICEF--I was principal person in charge of education for UNICEF--I looked at private education in many Middle Eastern countries and saw over the last six to eight years a tremendous increase in the demand for private education, particularly at the primary and secondary level.
In Jordan alone, and I was based in Jordan, lived in Jordan, and traveled out from Jordan, in the seven years I was there, the demand went up from about 10 percent to almost 30 percent, and that when I left, quite a number of the large prominent secondary schools had converted to a private status because the law enabled them to do that. So there is a tremendous move in that direction.
In Lebanon you've had ever since the war, a very large group of schools and educational systems run privately by ethnic communities. About 70 percent of primary school children attend private schools in Lebanon. So the tradition is there and it's strong in the Middle East, and I suspect it will bounce back very strongly in Iraq, if Iraqis are given half the chance. But I hope not at the expense of the poor, because when you allow this, of course, to happen, you very often pull away resources from public education, which could be in this case, not a positive thing to do. But it's a delicate issue, but I think an important one.
QUESTION: Thank you very much for that response and especially the last comment, not at the expense of the poor, because I wanted to add that we're trying to address a non-selective private community, and in that respect another add-on QUESTION: Are there opportunities to get involved in public school management like there are in this country now? Charter schools I'm speaking of.
MS. PETERSON: I'm sorry, to just clarify your question. Opportunities to become involved in what sense?
QUESTION: Managing public schools.
MS. PETERSON: Would you like to address that?
MR. : I think the only honest answer is that that's a question that has to be addressed as we get deeper into policy choices over the next year. I'm sure that there will be some interest in exploring ways to diversify schooling provision. But which choices will be made and how they will play out in the Iraqi environment, I think, is premature to say.
QUESTION: Thank you.
QUESTION: Good morning. Donna Friggo [ph], Relief International.
I'd like to ask you to go back and just expand a little bit more on the grants program. And particularly wondering whether or not there's going to be opportunities for international and U.S. NGOs to participate, either at their subgrants, or sub-contracts in the implementation of the RISE program.
MS. PETERSON: Again, the focus of this session is on implementation efforts, progress on that. In terms of sub-partnership relationships, et cetera, there can be separate communications with the prime partners for USAID. But Frank, would you like to address part of that question? Thank you.
MR. : I think Jessica is also working with us on this, and has made an enormous contribution to the whole idea of grants. Grants are flexible, and basically the only way that we're going to do this is if we make partnerships with international and hopefully national NGOs, but there aren't too many national NGOs, and we're looking for the best international NGOs to work with. But we're in a pilot phase on our grants at the moment. And we're testing different modalities for distribution of grants.
And one of them is work, very close work with localized international NGOs in the Basra area, and as we spread north with our grants program, we'll probably be searching out all sorts of partnerships, as they occur, for us to be able to distribute those grants quickly and effectively.
The issue I think on grants is: What are grants for? And we need to be extremely careful here about how we distribute grants and what for. We have to leave enough flexibility for people to be able to identify real needs at the school level, but at the same time we have to provide parameters, because they can't just use grants for anything. And I think that this is going to be our challenge, just what degree of flexibility, and how do we make those grants accountable to what it is that the grant is intended to do is going to be our problem.
If we work with NGOs, they've got to be with us 100 percent on the mechanism for distribution of grants. So that the same accountability criteria that we apply overall or in general will be applied by the NGOs themselves if they distribute our money to schools. The danger, of course, is overlap, and Jessica and I have raised this several times. We're trying to avoid that. Because everybody seems to be into grants. Small ones, big ones.
We looked at two schools recently. One, I was actually with Jessica in the field, looking at a school that is currently being refurbished by the British, a DFID grant. And they're spending about $50,000 on the total refurbishment of the school, and it was impressive. They had about 50 or 60 local workers and our local contractor there, doing the job, and they were doing the job very quickly.
With $8 million and a huge number of schools, I'm not sure that we can be as generous as that. But I'm sure that level of generosity at some point is going to be justifiable. Quite how we do that, I think, will depend on each individual case. But if we go distributing grants, case by case, it's going to be an awful long grant distribution, and time is against us. So we have to put something in place that is not automatic, but almost automatic, but runs itself with credibility and accountability. But it's an issue, and we are looking for partners and partnerships.
Thanks.
QUESTION: Jean Silvernail from Department of Defense. I know that you have been saying that coordination among the contractors is certainly something you're concentrating on. One of the questions that I have is: To what degree, and who's responsibility is it to be coordinating, for example, the national testing and the curriculum that's being developed by contractors, the teacher training and the textbooks that are to go with them?
MS. PETERSON: Jessica?
MS. : Certainly. It's important to note that USAID is not funding the textbook review that I mentioned to you earlier. This is being done by OCPA, and USAID through our technical advisor in Baghdad is participating. However, we are not the ones funding that initiative. We are simply participating in the effort, and as USAID, our, if you will, mandate, is to facilitate this process and to facilitate Iraqi participation in the process. We believe this is something that needs to be answered by Iraqis from Iraqis. And that is the extent of our involvement. Simply participating in this effort.
In terms of curriculum development, USAID is in fact giving support to UNICEF to engage this effort at the NOE level. Again, it's a grant. It's not one of our contractors, who is tasked with this. Because once again, from USAID, our perspective is that this needs to be an Iraqi-led process.
I'd like to take this opportunity to reiterate that we are dealing with an urgent post-emergency program. We believe that issues of curriculum reform, which precedes new textbooks, is something that takes beyond a year to accomplish. That is why we are laying foundations for reform in the future. And this is where RTI comes in.
Frank Method clearly delineated the activities that USAID is in fact supporting and funding. In order to lay foundations for processes that need to have Iraqi participation, that need to have Iraqi leadership. Therefore, when you ask us about how are we coordinating in those efforts that are medium to longer-term, we are there to assist the process, but we are not in fact leading some of the processes you mentioned.
Those are being conducted by OCPA.
MS. PETERSON: Thank you, Jessica.
MR. METHOD: Thank you. Just to add a couple of points to that. It's quite correct that these tasks, teacher training, curriculum development, materials development, test development, needs to be very well coordinated, needs to be developed as a package. This is a slow and complex process. If you rush this, you make mistakes, you make a mess. It probably is a minimum of a year of gestation to get this right.
And that's what we try to get started, a process of moving that forward. I can't give you the architecture of that now, because it just hasn't been discussed adequately to move forward. But integrated will be one of the key words. Integrated, coordinated, aligned.
The other point here is that it's inaccurate to talk about curriculum development in the current context. There is no curriculum development per se going on at present. There are materials that are existing materials, such as what UNICEF is bringing in with their life skills curriculum. These are very basic materials on life skills that have been field-tested in many contexts. They're not controversial at all, they're very basic.
The work that is going on with respect to the printing of materials is really expurgating of existing materials, rather than the development of new materials. They are being reviewed for pictures of Saddam and Baathist etiology. Or whatever. That's been taken out, but it's not being replaced with anything new. It will be screened. These are all on film. If there's something that needs to be taken out, they'll replace it with a picture of a flower or whatever. They're not writing new text at this point, it's not curriculum development.
MS. PETERSON: Okay, I think we have time for just one more question, actually. Thank you. QUESTION: Hi, my name is Aaron Serraf [ph] and I'm with Serraf Solutions. And actually it's not a question, more of a comment. I grew up in Iraq and I left Iraq in 1970. And I went to private education, but at that time in the 60s and the 50s, they didn't have very good public education. And that's very important because we saw a huge jump in a lot of Iraqis living in rural areas, and then outside Baghdad, who actually could participate in higher education outside Iraq Exchange Program.
It will be a very sad day if that program actually gets killed, where people don't have access. It's not just money, it's you know, as a private person, do I want to invest in a private school in a rural area? So you want to make sure that the public curriculum please stands up to, not only the short term, that's puts som1e bylaws within the Ministry of Education that they do not kill the public program.
Thank you.
MS. PETERSON: Thank you very much.
Just to highlight, there will be another session, a public consultation on our health sector this Thursday at the same time as well. So thank you very much for coming.
[END OF TAPED RECORDING.]
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