Minister of Education Karami Chairs Expanded Consultative Meeting to Reconsider Secondary School Exams

Minister of Education and Higher Education Rima Karami chaired an expanded virtual educational consultative meeting, based on a recommendation from the Parliamentary Education Committee to reconsider the issue of holding secondary school certificate exams and the decision of Prime Minister Dr. Nawaf Salam to postpone the date set for the first session of secondary school certificate exams, allowing more time for preparation and study pending clarity on political and security developments.

Participating in the meeting were Director General of Education Fadi Yarak, Head of the Private Education Department Imad al-Ashqar, Director of Primary Education George Daoud, Director of Secondary Education Khaled Fayyad, Director of the Guidance and Counseling Department Hilda Khoury, the Union of Private Schools headed by Father Youssef Nasr and members, the Syndicate of Private Schools in the Regions headed by Rabih Bazzi, Head of the Secondary Education Association Jamal Omar, the Syndicate of Teachers in Private Schools Neemat Mahfouz, Muntaha Fawaz representing contracted teachers in secondary education, and directors of private and public secondary schools from various Lebanese regions, especially directors of secondary schools in affected areas in the South, Nabatieh, the Southern Suburb, and Baalbek-Hermel.

During the meeting, which lasted more than three hours, Minister Karami listened to the participants' presentation of the circumstances surrounding the academic year in the recent months of the aggression on Lebanon, which varied according to the regional distribution of each secondary school. The participants expressed their opinions, which ranged between the necessity of canceling official exams and the necessity of conducting them in accordance with the flexibility adopted by the Ministry of Education by holding three sessions, in addition to proposals to postpone the exams or adopt optional exams for students.

Minister Karami affirmed that she would study these viewpoints to formulate proposals that she would bring to the Cabinet table, based on educational justice, educational equity, and consideration of each student's situation.

She recalled that "the security situation and student safety have always been a red line, as has educational justice. Hence, the decree issued by the Cabinet adopting a flexible mechanism included holding three sessions, reducing the curriculum that students will be examined on to the date of the start of the aggression on March 1, in addition to examining students in their displacement areas to avoid exposing them to any security risks." She also pointed to the need to work as an educational community to find solutions to the negative repercussions of the various exceptional decisions necessitated by these circumstances, in order to preserve the students' academic future and the level of their learning experience, based on the fact that conditions in Lebanon are in a state of constant instability due to its geographical location, and that conditions in Lebanon may not change much with the start of the next academic year, thus we would face a repetition of today's educational debate.

Minister Karami requested participants to send their proposals that they deem appropriate, and alternatives that might constitute acceptable solutions preserving both the credibility of the Lebanese certificate and the rights of students.