IRAQ: MoE to launch education channel

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations]

BAGHDAD, 13 Apr 2005 (IRIN) - Iraq’s Ministry of Education (MoE) is establishing a new education television channel in April to give primary and secondary school students the option of taking additional lessons at home and for those who are not attending school due to insecurity.

"The idea of this channel is similar to the educational TV established during the 1970s. We are going to present the entire curriculum for all grades, along with scientific programmes which are useful for the students," Baha'a Yehyah, director of the education channel, told IRIN in the capital Baghdad.

The channel will broadcast for at least six hours a day, seven days a week. "Specialised supervisors in the education field and good teachers will participate in preparing the programmes and teaching lessons," Yehyah added.

"I taught intermediate stage maths on the educational TV channel for several years," Zuheer Mohammed, a teacher at al-Resafa School in Baghdad, told IRIN.

"I heard about the new channel and I think it is a very good idea. It will help students a lot. I'm eager to teach again on the new channel," he said.

Children were also eager to watch and learn. "I would like to watch lessons on TV again because they are useful for us to catch up on what we missed during our usual classes," Iyad Hayder, a secondary school student, told IRIN.

"I used to watch maths and physics lessons when I was at school, they helped me a lot in my examinations," student Wesam Ahmed told IRIN.

Television-based learning was stopped in 1993, during Saddam Hussein’s time, when his son, Uday, took most of the equipment for his own television channel.

Reports about education in Iraq show many difficulties, especially after three wars in the past two decades, 12 years of sanctions and poor governance. It left an education system, which was once the envy of the Arab world, in tatters.

According to a United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) report from October 2004, the country’s education curriculum hasn't been updated for 20 years.

In addition, the agency noted that emergency education supplies for children and teachers were needed, along with desks and new school buildings. Bad security has also prevented many parents from sending children to school because of the threats of kidnapping.

"We hope we can offer many benefits through this channel to all the students around Iraq. This channel will serve students who cannot go to school to continue their lessons because of conflict in some critical places," Yehyah said.

[ENDS]