Educational Problems in Tunisia

By Mohamed Amin Tounsi

Guest Contributor | Manouba Pioneer High School, Tunisia

Editor’s Note: This article reflects the author’s perspective and experiences as a student and youth advocate in Tunisia. It has been lightly edited for clarity and formatting.

As a learner in Tunisia and an active advocate for youth empowerment through education, I have had the opportunity to observe our education system from different perspectives: as a student in the classroom, through my involvement in youth organizations, and on the ground while working alongside hundreds of young people.

These experiences have allowed me to see both the strengths and shortcomings of our educational system. Tunisia has a rich educational heritage and generations of talented students, dedicated teachers, and committed educators. However, one conclusion has consistently emerged throughout my journey: our education system has enormous potential, but it also faces deep structural challenges that prevent many learners from reaching their full potential.

These challenges are not simply about examination results or university rankings. They concern the way we understand education itself and how we prepare young people for a rapidly changing world. In my opinion, three major issues deserve particular attention.

An Education System Overly Centered on School-Based Learning

In Tunisia, education is still largely perceived as something that happens inside the classroom. As a result, most public policies, investments, and educational discussions focus almost exclusively on formal education—the education delivered in schools, colleges, and universities.

Yet education extends far beyond academic institutions.

Non-formal education, including youth associations, leadership programs, volunteering, training workshops, debate clubs, and community initiatives, plays a crucial role in developing practical skills, civic engagement, leadership, teamwork, and social responsibility.

Similarly, informal education—learning through everyday experiences, reading, online platforms, travel, discussions, mentorship, and self-directed learning—has become one of the most powerful sources of knowledge in today's digital world.

Unfortunately, these two forms of education remain poorly structured and insufficiently recognized in Tunisia. They are rarely integrated into a coherent national educational vision and often depend on individual or civil society initiatives rather than sustainable institutional support. There is little coordination between what students learn inside the classroom and the valuable competencies they acquire outside it.

This creates an imbalance. We continue to evaluate success mainly through academic performance while overlooking many of the competencies that define successful citizens and professionals in the twenty-first century.

Education should not stop at the school gate. A truly effective educational ecosystem recognizes that learning happens everywhere and values all three forms of education.

A Curriculum That Needs to Evolve

The second challenge concerns the curriculum itself.

To be fair, Tunisia's curriculum has produced generations of highly capable students. It has historically placed a strong emphasis on scientific knowledge, mathematics, languages, and analytical thinking. However, the world has changed dramatically, and educational systems must evolve accordingly.

Today, the challenge is both qualitative and quantitative.

From a qualitative perspective, teaching methods remain largely traditional. In many classrooms, learning continues to rely heavily on memorization, teacher-centered instruction, and standardized assessment. While these approaches have their place, they often leave limited room for active participation, creativity, experimentation, or collaborative learning.

Modern education should increasingly encourage students to ask questions instead of simply memorizing answers. It should cultivate critical thinking, creativity, communication, collaboration, adaptability, digital literacy, emotional intelligence, and problem-solving—skills that employers, universities, and societies increasingly value.

From a quantitative perspective, curricula are often overloaded. Students are expected to absorb a vast amount of information within limited timeframes, leaving little opportunity to explore concepts in depth or connect knowledge to real-life situations. At the same time, learning resources remain unequal or insufficiently accessible in many contexts, creating disparities in educational opportunities.

Ultimately, education should prioritize meaningful learning rather than simply covering content. The objective should not be to teach more, but to teach better.

Investing in Teachers Means Investing in Education

No educational reform can succeed without teachers.

Teachers are the cornerstone of every education system. They inspire, guide, support, and shape future generations. Yet expecting them to transform education without continuously investing in their professional development is unrealistic.

Continuous professional learning should become a central pillar of educational policy.

Teachers should have regular opportunities to strengthen their expertise in innovative pedagogical approaches, student-centered learning, classroom communication, public speaking, digital technologies, project-based learning, assessment methods, and inclusive education. They should also be encouraged to exchange best practices, learn from international experiences, and remain informed about emerging educational research and global trends.

Professional development should not be viewed as an occasional workshop but as a continuous process that accompanies teachers throughout their careers.

Supporting teachers also means recognizing their essential role in society and providing them with the resources, confidence, and professional autonomy necessary to innovate inside their classrooms.

Looking Ahead

Education is far more than a school curriculum.

It is an ecosystem in which learners, teachers, families, associations, policymakers, and communities all share responsibility.

If we truly want to prepare future generations for the challenges of the twenty-first century, we must move beyond isolated reforms and adopt a more comprehensive vision of learning—one that values formal, non-formal, and informal education; modernizes teaching and learning approaches; and places teachers at the heart of meaningful change.

Reforming education is not simply about adding new subjects or rewriting textbooks.

It is about reimagining how learning happens, why we learn, and how we empower every young person to thrive in an increasingly complex and interconnected world.