Country Overview: Syria
Syria was part of the Ottoman Empire from 1516 to 1920, when it became a League of Nations mandate, and shortly thereafter became a French mandate. Syria revolted in 1925, but would not gain its full independence from France until 1946. In 1958, Syria merged with Egypt to form the United Arab Republic, though it seceded in 1961 and the Ba’ath Party took control of the unstable state. In 1970, Hafez al-Assad, then the leader of the military, took control of the government. Under al-Assad Syria was involved with Egypt in wars against Israel, occupied Lebanon from 1976 to 2005, and participated in the American Gulf War against Saddam Hussein. When al-Assad died in 2000, his son, Bashar al-Assad took over his empire.
Currently, Syria is engaged in a long and bloody civil war which sprung from the Arab Spring revolutions. After peaceful protests started in 2011, the Syrian Army responded violently. However, Sunni Muslims defected from the Alawite Syrian Army and formed the Free Syrian Army. These two factions have been fighting a violent and bloody war that has created over four million Syrian refugees, involved international actors such as ISIL, and the Syrian state has nearly ceased to function (UNHCR). As such, this research will primarily consider the state of education under the long-term Assad regime prior to 2011.
Syria’s total population in 2014 was estimated at about 17.9 million people (CIA World Factbook). The population is roughly 33.1 percent under age fifteen, 20.2 percent between ages fifteen and twenty-five, 37.9 percent between ages twenty-five and fifty-four, and 8.7 percent over age fifty-four (CIA World Factbook). Syria’s GDP per capita in 2012 was 3,289 USD (UIS). Almost three-fourths of Syrians are Sunni Muslims, with Alawite and Christian minorities (CIA World Factbook). However, the Syrian government has been largely Alawite, but followed generally secular policies (Shaaban 102).
While Syria was part of the United Arab Republic, its education system took on the same format of the Egyptian educational system, with the three main levels of schooling with the first six years being compulsory. Attendance and enrollment were both low, and illiteracy was high, until the 1970s (Groiss 7). General Syrian enrollment in all levels of education increased substantially in the 1970s under al-Assad, due to the government’s goal of eliminating all illiteracy by 1991 (Bryant 1347). The Assad regime viewed education as a priority, since it was “a means of both ensuring progress and indoctrinating and controlling the masses” (Groiss 7). Since 1970, the number of females enrolled in all levels of education have increased enormously, more than tripling for primary and secondary levels (Bryant 1347). Syria’s female enrollment rate in 1998 was between 45 and 50.7 percent at each level of education (Bryant 1345).
As of 2001, there were 10,783 Syrian primary schools. Like Saudi Arabia, six years of formal schooling are compulsory (Bryant 1345). As in both Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the female enrollment rate declines with level of education, with 96 percent enrolled in primary, 40 percent in secondary, and just 13 percent enrolled in tertiary education (Bryant 1345). About 86.4 percent of the total population of Syria is literate, but the female literacy rate is below this at 81 percent (CIA World Factbook). As of 2007, Syria spent about 4.9 percent of its GDP on education (CIA World Factbook). This represented about 18.9 percent of total government expenditure for the same year (UIS). However, as seen in Table 10, in 2002, the labor-force population was primarily educated only at the primary level (Huitfeldt 9).
