Kurdistan Regional Government
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Iraqi teachers head north for English

WED, 21 FEB 2007 20:09 | KDC

Matt Salisbury talks to Kurdish ministers

A new English language American University in Iraq is planned – but not for Baghdad.

It will be based in the outskirts of Suleimaniah, a city in the comparatively safe Kurdish-controlled region in the north, which is seeing an expansion of English language teaching.

In an interview with the English Language Gazette, the Kurdistan Regional Government higher education minister Dr Idriss Hadi Salih said a charter had been awarded for a Suleimaniah-based private American University to be opened ‘next year or the year after’.

The university aims to reverse the brain drain of Iraqi intellectuals. It will be part-funded by $10.5 million (£5.32 million) from US agencies – believed to be the biggest donation for an Iraqi educational project. Teaching will be in English. It aims to specialise in IT and engineering, but will open with a small intake for intensive foundation English courses in the spring.

The American institution will follow the region’s first English-language university, the University of Kurdistan - Hawler, already running foundation English courses accredited by the University of Bradford. Science, maths and medicine at state-run Kurdish universities are now switching to teaching in English.

The expansion of the sector has led to a shortage of university teachers. The ministry now runs scholarships ‘for the significant amount of teachers from Baghdad’ moving to the safety of Kurdistan ‘for security reasons’. There is a special programme to fill posts with teachers from other parts of Iraq with a good enough standard of English to teach Kurdish-speaking university students who don’t speak Arabic. Dr Salih, predicted that continued expansion of the university sector would fuel the teacher shortage.

Minister for primary and secondary education Dilshad Abdul-Rahman said, ‘we receive 10 teachers a day’ who are ‘seeking refuge’ from Baghdad. Kurdistan takes primary and secondary teachers and pays their salaries for ‘humanitarian reasons’. They can’t use these teachers because they can’t teach in the Kurdish language.

Kurdistan is introducing an overhauled English-language school curriculum, assisted by Macmillan, which has an office in the regional capital Erbil. A staggered system introduces the new curriculum one school year at a time. Books 7 and 8 – the first and second year of secondary school – are ready, as is the material for six-year-olds in the first year of primary school. The Macmillan programme includes cascading training and training for trainers, but there is still a shortage of English teachers and a dire shortage of school buildings, with some urban schools teaching in three shifts.

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