A bold drive got underway Saturday to revitalise Iraq's schools and purge them of propaganda from the Baath regime of ousted president Saddam Hussein, which starved classrooms to fund its military goals.
Interim Education Minister Aladin Alwan launched the four-year project to overhaul Iraq's teaching system at a conference in Baghdad, citing education of young women as one of his top priorities.
"This is a huge challenge. We have six million schoolchildren and over 18,000 schools," he told AFP.
"We have major problems in relation to the curriculum and problems in relation to the training of teachers."
Alwan said Saturday's conference of education specialists was the start of an extensive consultation to establish how best to teach children in a country still suffering the effects of war and deep ethnic and religious divisions.
Schooling in the country was badly hit under Saddam's regime, as funds were diverted to fuel decades of conflict. During efforts to resist US-led military occupation, many schools and playgrounds were used as ammunition dumps.
"We used to have a good education system in the 1960s and 70s, but it started to deteriorate in the 80s due to politicisation in Iraq, its use as a tool of the ruling regime and drastic reduction in the budget due to military spending," Alwan said.
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