Syrian Arab News Agency S A N A
Damascus, SANA- The theme of the World Youth Day 2019 focuses on inviting societies and governments to achieve a progress in the domain of education in light of the presence of international statistics which show that there are currently 1.8 billion young people between the ages of 10 and 24 in the world which is the largest youth population ever. However, more than half of all children and adolescents aged 6-14 lack basic reading and maths skills, despite the fact that the majority of them are attending school.
This global learning crisis threatens to severely hamper progress towards the achievement of sustainable development, according to the UN.
On the occasion of the World Youth Day, the UN calls upon the governments and organizations which are interested in the youth issues to make education accessible and inclusive so as to make it a strong tool for achieving 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development along with shedding light on the exerted efforts including the efforts of the youths themselves to make education available for all youths.
In Syria, the national plan for youths which had been prepared by the Syrian Commission for Family Affairs and Population and which is currently being revised, focuses in the part which is related to education on bridging the gap which has been created by the terrorist war waged against Syria and which caused a notable increase the number of dropouts from pre-university education, according to Head of the Commission Dr. Mohammad Akram al-Qash.
Al-Qash noted that the efforts exerted by the Education Ministry have succeeded in overcoming the issue of the dropouts from schools through applying “Curriculum B”
The national plan, according to al-Qash, pays a great attention to developing the vocational education due to its role in filling the shortage in some necessary occupations in the stage of reconstruction.
He added that the suggestions made by the commission tackled the issue of amending some laws and regulations which are related to that type of education through providing what is required for the students through paying salaries for them besides their study in a way that would put an end to child labor.
Al-Qash underlined the importance of the diversity of university education through establishing universities of applied sciences to provide educational styles that complement the vocational education in the per-secondary stage.
He considered that establishing various colleges in different provinces would contribute to facilitating the opportunities of continuing university education for the youth wherever they are.
Al-Qash called for increasing the number of the job vaccines at the institutions and companies in order to be in line with the vocational and university education in a way that would solve the problem of the unemployment of the graduates.
He added that the youth aged from 15 to 24 constitute about 22 percent of Syrian citizens while the age group from 15 to 30 constitutes 30 percent of the Syrian citizens, underlining the necessity of updating the data which are related to the youth to get acquainted with their reality more precisely.
August 12th was first designated International Youth Day by the UN General Assembly in 1999, and serves as an annual celebration of the role of young women and men as essential partners in change, and an opportunity to raise awareness of challenges and problems facing the world’s youths.
Ruaa al-Jazaeri