Syria

Syria has a centralized education system that is primarily public (~98%). The Ministry of Education sets the curriculum, guidelines and goals of teaching for all schools. The formal language and medium of instruction in schools and universities is Arabic. Two different types of Arabic are used in daily communication and in education: conversational language is quite different from the one taught in schools and used in assessments. The Curriculum is based on textbooks and developed by the Ministry of Education’s Center for Development of Educational Curricula. Textbooks are considered as one of the important means of communicating information, skills, and values to learners and connecting school and home. Everyone who has been schooled is able to understand the Arabic used in schools. The content of the textbooks is organized into units, with a focus on knowledge acquisition reflected in the number and variations of topics covered in each unit and grade; topics are presented in a way that is easy for learners to understand (e.g., using colours, pictures, conceptual maps, contextualized examples, and questions based on individual and group activities). The Ministry textbooks and resources highlight key instructional strategies for lesson planning and delivery and the role of the teacher in each step of the learning process. Assessment in the Syrian curriculum is in the form of quizzes and tests (one per semester). Also, students have to sit for national exams in all subjects: one at the end of grade 9 and one at the of grade 12 (Baccalaureate).