Arab Campaign for Education for All ( ACEA) has invited its member national coalitions to a strategizing workshop in Kathmandu , Nepal mid November. This meeting will coincide with the world assembly meeting of Global Campaign for Education held around the same period.

National Coalitions of education in the Arab region will conduct both stakeholder and context analysis to set new strategic objectives for the coming two years.  While ACEA will continue to work on  some of its old priority areas such as SDG4 mainstreaming in national policies and M&E systems, advocacy work on equality and quality issues in education, it will also work on important emerging priorities like education rights of refugees and IDPs since many member countries in ACEA are considered as emergency countries. ACEA members will discuss how their advocacy work can influence national policy makers as well as donors to adopt and support conflict-sensitive approaches to education for populations.

ACEA members will also focus on the growing problem of privatization of education specifically in emergency settings. The growing evidence on opportunistic private sector efforts in emergency setting is alarming and ACEA is determined for a collective action to advocate for free public and equitable education. Members will draw from the experience of Moroccan and Somali coalitions advocacy work and upscale their efforts to the regional level.

ACEA is proud of its work on National Teachers Prize program in partnership with Varkey Foundation for the second year. Last month, both Lebanese Coalition for Education and Egyptian Coalition for Education announced the winners of National Teacher Prize;   two brilliant national teachers in the public education sector. Both Mr.  Mohammed Berjass, a math teacher from Wadi Al Jadeed governorate, and Ms. Mahasen Al Saba’a, an Arabic teacher from Saida region set examples of public sector teachers working against the odds to better quality of public education . The winners will compete for Global Teacher Prize to be announced in March 2019.

The prize creates annually a climate of appreciation to public education sector and public teachers and also leverages support to public schooling systems in general against all efforts to transform education into a business. It is an annual event where ACEA along with its national members not only celebrate public teachers but also demand more budgets for public education sector and more support for quality education.

ACEA will continue its advocacy work in support for public education  to build the capacity of its member on resist privatization of education. We are pleased that the toolkit “Pubic Good over Private Profitâ€‌, a  resource published by Global Campaign for Education is available now in Arabic Language. It will be used by ACEA to raise awareness among  civil society coalitions and organisations with a rights-based understanding of education, who want to better understand the development and impact of privatisation in the education sector in their countries.