Life Skills and Citizenship Education in MENA Countries
Translating the Life Skills and Citizenship Education (LSCE) Framework into Action – country examples
Highlights
Guided by the Life Skills and Citizenship Education (LSCE) Framework, the UNICEF MENA Regional Office supports country offices in promoting life skills and citizenship education through promoting a holistic approach to transformation of education by focusing on:
- Learning and teaching – LSCE is not about an additional subject: it is about changing the way we teach and what we want our children and youth to learn.
- Systems – LSCE needs to be at the core of the learning agenda, not just for youth, but at all level, starting as early as possible. This requires changing the curriculum, the way we prepare our teachers and the way we assess learning.
- Promoting multiple pathways - learning does not only take place in schools, but also in non-formal and informal settings, at home and at the place of work; innovation, creativity and strong partnerships between public and private sector are needed to keep the doors open for children and youth to move between different forms of education and learning
- Finally, an enabling environment - many excellent reform programmes often fail because we forgot the need to change day to day practices at the institutional level. For instance, how can we develop personal empowerment if children and youth do not have a voice in the day to day management of schools?
Keeping sight of this approach, the operationalization of the LSCE Initiative in MENA is ongoing, showing and already demonstrating results towards upstream engagement within the framework of national curriculum reforms (e.g. Tunisia and Egypt), the upgrading of national TVET systems (e.g. Lebanon and Libya), and the piloting of innovative contents and methods for skills development (e.g. Jordan, Morocco, and the State of Palestine).
Examples of how UNICEF engages in different countries around the LSCE vision have been developed in Egypt, Jordan, Palestine and Morocco, with more country examples to follow.
