President Kais Saied reviewed during a meeting with Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Moncef Boukthir, at the Carthage Palace on Thursday, the preliminary results of the national consultation on the education system, in which more than 580,000 people took part.
According to a statement issued by the Presidency of the Republic, one of the most striking results of the preliminary report is Tunisians’ attachment to public schooling and their desire to continue mastering modern technologies.
This is in addition to their call for the intensification of intellectual and cultural activities in educational institutions and other areas, which will be included in the draft law on education after the drafting of a law regulating the Higher Council of Education.
The establishment of that Council is provided for in Article 135 of the Constitution of 25 July 2022, it was indicated.
During the meeting, the Head of State addressed a number of reforms “that were ostensibly reforms but aimed at undermi
ning the public service of education”, as well as “unsuccessful attempts to damage the notion of thinking among the nascent generations at all stages of education”, according to the same statement.
He also addressed the issue of the brain drain of Tunisians, “as the elite of the elite in Tunisia has been looking for jobs abroad in all specialities,” including the engineering sector, which has seen the migration of more than forty thousand engineers in fifteen years, and the annual migration rate today exceeds six thousand people.
“Are we the ones who lend to the countries where these skills have chosen to settle?” Are they the ones who lend us money, or are we the lenders?” asked the President.
President Kais Saied said that Tunisia is not against technical cooperation, but “if the best of our skilled people had found the conditions to live a decent life in Tunisia, many would not have thought of emigrating”.
In this context, he stressed the need to review a number of laws that exacerbate this phenomenon
in engineering, medicine and other sciences.
Source: Agence Tunis Afrique Presse