A college in Iraq is trying to steer men away from violence with an approach to further education based on the British model. The Najaf Technical Institute, south of Baghdad, has begun training programmes aimed at giving skills to unemployed former members of militias, which, it is hoped, will lead them out of trouble and into employment.
The inspiration came from a visit to Greenwich Community College, east London, in 2004, says the dean of the Najaf Institute, Dr Ibrahim Moosa.
‘When we were getting acquainted with the syllabus and training programmes at the college, we noted that there were special courses for training and qualifying unemployed people,” he says. ‘When we returned to Iraq, we discussed the ability of our institute to conduct such courses and the members of the institute’s council gave us the go ahead.” Five courses — in construction, air conditioning, welding, electricity and metal turning — were devised and sessions began in early October. ‘Each programme was designed to suit all participants from different backgrounds and most of the lectures were practical,” says Moosa.
This represents a departure for Iraq, says Ali Hadawa, principal of Southend Adult Community College, on the east coast of England, who grew up there. He was previously vice-principal at Greenwich and has been playing a key role in an initiative by nine United Kingdom colleges, with the support of the Association of Colleges and the British Council, to help Iraq’s war damaged education system.
For the past two years, college heads and managers from Iraq have been coming to the UK to spend up to six weeks shadowing their counterparts in the nine institutions and decide what ideas they might like to take home.
There is no further education system (as opposed to school and universities) as such in Iraq, Hadawa explains. The closest equivalents are technical institutes and technical colleges, which are part of the higher education sector.
Young people leave school at 18 and, depending on their results, progress to university, to technical college — where they can get degrees in technical/vocational subjects such as air conditioning or car mechanics — or to a technical institute to pursue vocational courses to a sub-degree level.
‘It doesn’t have the complexities of the UK system,” Hadawa says. In particular, it doesn’t have a tradition of giving adults a second chance.
‘These colleges are for 18-year-olds. The problem is that men in their 30s and 40s are coming out of the military and, in the absence of anything else, they can get into trouble,” says Hadawa. The Iraqis see the value in the lifelong learning ethos of the UK system and its acceptance of all-comers, irrespective of prior attainment.
There were 57 people on the first Najaf programme, 10 to 15 per course.
The institute paid their transport and provided each trainee with a bag of tools. On November 6, Moosa says, they graduated at a celebration attended by the mayor of Najaf. ‘The institute plans to add new courses such as carpentry, sewing, TV maintenance and computers,” he adds. —