شبكة المعلومات العربية التربوية

This piece of research sought to analyze the relationship between international competitiveness and pre-university education in South Korea and Egypt and ended with formulating a number of mechanisms that Egypt could utilize to improve the international competitiveness of the Egyptian pre-university education. The current piece of research analyzed the sixth pillar of international competitiveness entitled skills. The skills pillar has constituent sub-indicators. These constituent sub-indicators are as follows: Mean years of schooling years, extent of staff training, quality of vocational training, skillset of graduates, digital skills among active population, ease of finding skilled employees, school life expectancy years, critical thinking in teaching, and pupil-to-teacher ratio in primary education. The current piece of research did not analyze the 12th pillar of international competitiveness focusing on innovation capability at universities and research centers as this 12th pillar could be investigated in a separate piece of research. As for Egypt, the current piece of research recommended implementing the following reforms: increasing the mean years of schooling years, improving the quality of staff training, raising the quality of vocational training, upgrading the skillset of secondary and tertiary graduates, fostering digital skills among active population, increasing the ease of finding skilled employees, raising the school life expectancy years, providing more training to teachers to harness critical thinking in teaching inside classrooms, reducing the pupil-to-teacher ratio in Egyptian primary education, and improving the in-service training programs provided to teachers so as to focus more on nurturing the rational thinking skills, improving the high-order cognitive skills, harnessing the meta-cognitive skills, and nurturing the social and emotional skills among pupils. In addition to these recommendations, the current piece of research urged policy-makers in Egypt to employ more teachers so as to reduce the teaching burdens of teachers working at public schools, to build more schools in overcrowded school-districts, to reduce the number of students per class, to build more schools in villages, hamlets, and educationally-deprived areas, to reduce the ratios of school drop-out, and to increase the awareness of Egyptian. (Published Abstract)