Education quality and the future of the nation
Over the decades, Kuwait has invested heavily in education, building schools and universities and providing free education and scholarships for its citizens, making a university degree a natural aspiration for most Kuwaiti families. This is an achievement that cannot be underestimated.
However, the question we must boldly ask today is not: How many students graduate? But rather: What is the level of the graduate produced by our education system? The issue is no longer merely about access to education, but has become one of educational quality.
We have a growing number of graduates and holders of advanced degrees, but a degree alone does not produce an outstanding doctor, an innovative engineer, a successful teacher, or an employee capable of developing their institution. The true value of a degree lies in what the holder has acquired in terms of knowledge, skills, critical thinking, problem-solving abilities, and responsibility.
The time has come to review an educational culture that has become entrenched over the years, which is partly based on memorizing for the exam, taking the exam for the grade, earning the grade for the degree, and obtaining the degree for a job. But where is knowledge in this chain? Where are skills? And where is creativity?
A student who memorizes dozens of pages and then forgets them after the exam has not truly learned. A teacher who is pressured to finish the curriculum more than to ensure their students’ understanding becomes, despite their efforts, part of a process aimed at completing the course rather than building minds. More dangerously, poor quality in one educational stage carries over to the next; universities cannot single-handedly address everything that has accumulated over twelve years of school education, and the labor market, in turn, cannot transform every graduate into a competent professional after hiring them.
Therefore, educational reform must begin with teachers. We must restore the teacher’s status, make the teaching profession attractive to the best talents, and ensure that continuous training and evaluation are integral to the profession, rather than mere courses and certificates added to a personnel file.
Curricula also require a different philosophy. We do not need to cram more information into textbooks, as information is today available to students with a single click. What we need is a student who knows how to search for information, verify it, discuss it, respectfully debate it, and then use it to solve a real problem.
This is even more crucial in the age of artificial intelligence. Machines can now retrieve information, write, translate, and analyze at astonishing speed. Therefore, a school that continues to measure student excellence solely by their ability to recall information is preparing them for a world that has already begun to move beyond this skill.
Specifically in Kuwait, educational reform cannot be separated from labor market reform. If a degree is perceived by students as a near-guaranteed path to employment, regardless of skill level or the country’s need for their specialization, it will be difficult to make quality a priority. Competence, not just qualifications, must become the real currency in the labor market. This does not mean diminishing the worth of our children, teachers, or educational institutions. We have distinguished Kuwaiti models in medicine, engineering, sciences, literature, economics, and other fields, who have proven their capabilities both within Kuwait and abroad. The goal is to make excellence the norm created by the system, rather than an exception produced by individual effort.
Kuwait does not lack the financial resources to build a quality education system, nor does it lack the capacity to learn from the best global experiences. What we need is to make the quality of outcomes the primary benchmark for every educational reform. Instead of asking each year how many schools we have opened, how many scholarships we have awarded, or how many students have graduated, we must ask: Has the Kuwaiti student become better at reading and comprehension? Did he learn in his native language, thereby grasping all dimensions of knowledge, or did we impose a foreign language merely for decorative purposes, turning his mind into a mere repository rather than a source of inspiration? Has he become more capable of critical thinking and analysis? Have his skills in research, science, and mathematics improved?
These are the true indicators of success. Nations do not advance by the number of certificates hanging on walls, but by minds capable of transforming knowledge into production, learning into innovation, and employment into responsibility.
Kuwait, which has invested heavily in education, has reached the point where its greatest investment must be in quality. Because quality education does not merely produce graduates who seek jobs; it shapes individuals capable of creating jobs, solving problems, generating innovative ideas, and contributing to nation-building.
