What do you think of the education system and education reform as a researcher and now as a policy maker? What’s changed? People see things differently from the outside, but on the inside there are different views. What looks different?
One thing didn’t change for me. What looks different is – I’ll use an analogy here – it’s like using a microscope and now having a stronger lens. You can see things with more detail, with more focus. Like when you see a whole cell and then you can see many other components inside it.
I think this is because by the time I got the job, I’d already gone through a major transition in my life and I had been an action researcher for a while. But the real breakthrough was when I started working with the Khaddet Beirut team.
The purpose of us coming together was to put our know-how and abilities as researchers in the service of solving problems. There were educators and health workers, such as nurses. We were not all educators, and that was the first time we had collective awareness of what that meant. After three years of working together, even our name – when we wanted to position ourselves at AUB – we called ourselves scholar-activists. That was, for me, a major “uh-huh” moment. Accepting the role of minister came from the idea that I would simply continue doing what I was already doing, just in a new and different position.
On the contrary, this gave me strength and a sense of affirmation. Every day, I’m reminded that policymaking roles need researchers – people trained in research who have made that leap. You need that skillset: the ability to analyse, to ask “where’s your evidence?”, to deal with data and to give trust and authority to what we call objectivity – although, as a qualitative researcher, I dislike that term. You need the ability to abstract, to step back from a situation and try to make sense of it, and to approach things without assuming you already have the answers. Even though academics can sometimes be condescending, we are trained to be comfortable with discovery.
The problem arises when we start believing that we are the small percentage who know all the answers. I never had that mindset. I came with humility, because my work had always been hands-on with schools. I was not just trying to understand them, but to help them change. That taught me early on that there is a lot we do not know.
Has your diagnosis changed then and now?
No. It is more that I came with hypotheses that the government (the ministry) did not have the capacities to support innovation. In its current structure, the government was the barrier – it is porous, and so on. I teach my students about systems thinking. We talk about external environments and how systems interact with them. So I was aware that there were external environments. The hypothesis that there was not enough know-how within the government was already there, in one way or another. Some things were clearer than others. But they were still hypotheses, and for me they were like a case study – perhaps it was my own lack of understanding. These hypotheses were then confirmed. What exceeded my expectations was the issue of influence and the extent of structural weakness.
In what way?
There is no bureaucracy. We assume delays happen because of bureaucracy, but there is none. There are no people – just a handful of people working together, and another handful who have been so battered by the system that they are extremely defensive and deeply mistrustful of everything. When I arrived, I realised what it meant to have been working in an organisation where I felt safe. If you had asked me before, I would have complained that everyone at AUB is always on edge, arguing and critiquing. But this is different. This is a dangerous environment – unsafe in every sense of the word. For the first time in my life, I learned how to work without trust. I usually work on building trust, and I know I will never fully achieve it. But here, you have no choice. If you do not proceed without trust, you shut the door and cannot do anything. It is unbelievable. The other issue is that there is no foundational thinking. When I ask, “How do we do this? What does the law say?” – which is what I was trained to ask, including about policy or customary practice (which is part of how policy is defined, as both written and practised) – they respond with, “What do you want?” I find that fascinating. Also, people get upset if they are not invited to a meeting, even when it is none of their business to attend. If the meeting is about public school learning, for example, how is that their concern? So it is a kind of tribal mindset.
There’s no professionalisation
No role description either
These assumptions have always been there – did you not experience any big surprises?
This was my major “uh-huh” moment, I wasn’t aware of the intensity. It was a riddle – what does it mean to have political intervention? What is the result of these interventions?
This was my question – we always hear “they didn’t allow us”
So true. Floor 15 is like a cloud occupied by these people. Anyone from below gets partial trust, pressures the minister sitting there to get what they want. Yes, there have been reformist ministers, though I do not know how many. Some came with their own teams. For example, I came as a consultant when Minister Mneimneh was in office. His wife was also there as an education specialist. There was World Bank funding and a large, dedicated team. In that short period, a great deal was achieved – so much.
It worked because there was a team. There were challenges, but it was a full team. Majzoub was ethical and genuinely wanted reform. He was a good person, and they surrounded and constrained him. I think he was deeply upset by this and truly felt how dangerous the environment was, and how little he could trust anyone.
How do you think we can break this cycle? Indeed, I have a report that there’s no bureaucracy.
That’s one of the things that was quite interesting. As a researcher entering this space, everything felt like something I had already learned. I even draw on skills I learned through cooking. I am constantly alert, in problem-solving mode, trying to figure out: how do I stay afloat? How do I stay on course? There are a million things to work out.
How can we rebuild institutions?
I was convinced that the educational administrative model was one of community – discussion, no hierarchies, flexibility, adaptive organisations, adaptive policy, and so on. That is not true. The first step is to abide by the law, even if it is not functioning well. When I made the decision about the exams, for example, we had to proceed with them even though I knew they were largely pointless. What mattered was restoring the concept: official exams are not meant to satisfy every parent or student. Official exams exist because the ministry must take decisions. Decisions should not be made by harassing ministers through popularity, or by name-dropping powerful figures to pressure them into changing their minds.
I feel I need strength – my mindset as a researcher, my training, this need to discover. I am facing a huge puzzle now, trying to find my way through it. I take notes on everything I learn. I am documenting as I go, using my research skills.
That is one way. The second is this: let us sit with the rules. What are they? Let us return to them and comply with certain rules, no matter how imperfect they are.
You think, at this stage, it is better to bring back the laws to move away from personalisation?
To restore the authority of the state – something everyone talks about, but they only ever talk about it in relation to weapons this is a footnote. I strongly believe that the power of the state lies in the responsibilities the government is supposed to take on. We live in this country as if we are stateless.
How can we rebuild this? Some people think you can reform things here and there, but to what extent can you really leave a system behind?
We need to be convinced that this is not a one-person job. I keep hearing, “We are going to leave”, but so what? If what was done during our mandate – despite all the attempts – was recognised by some people as moving at least in the right direction, then people outside will believe they need to pick it up and continue it.
This is how democratic communities work. Forget the US and the shock they received from Trump. Look at how things used to work. I studied education policy in the US: the Democrats would do their job, work on files, and when their mandate ended, they would continue working through research, lobbying, and other forms of engagement. They kept working from the outside – lobbying, pushing, funding, understanding, research. All of it continued. When the next government came in, they picked up where the others left off. It is not perfect, of course.
What is your theory on reforming and building educational systems? What can you actually do?
We need time. What I am trying to do is start from the spaces where the ministry must intervene and act. The first area I worked on – and I am beginning to receive feedback on its impact – is the donor–ministry relationship, because it is that important.
As long as your government cannot pay a single cent towards your development projects, this is how they control your future. At the moment, they control both your present and your future. They focus on emergency response, and if there is a window for anything else – or recently, what they call “system strengthening” – the money still comes from them. They say the ministry wants to act, and I discovered that nothing was actually being implemented.
I acknowledged the strategic plan and priorities, and I told them I wanted to add a vision of what an ideal educational institution should look like. I did that. Within it, there are specific domains. So when they come to support us, we will channel their funding into these domains – even if they cannot fund all of them. It is not their role to realise my ideal vision; that is my responsibility.
The vision had a significant impact. Before this, I did not really know how things worked here. My academic background helped me.
Has the vision been announced, or is it internal?
No. It is in the presentation – and it has been developed further as well.
This was my anchor, and it was easy for me because I come from a research background. I understand this and I know what it means.
Were they accepting of this?
Yes, very much – but only to a point. At first, they thought they were being performative, because they tend to do that and focus on PR. After I implemented this, I explained that the funding had been allocated, and I had joined mid-cycle. I showed them what I had done and what they should pay me for – national assessment, the urgency for leadership that wasn’t included in the strategic plan.
I could not forge everything because of the bulk of resources that were arriving.
For example, the Germans were working on governance, and no one really knew what they were saying.
Do you think this has become institutionalised for future ministers?
If the succeeding minister is backward-thinking, it will matter. We have a mandate, and when we wrote the statement we partly relied on the oath speech and built on it. Supposedly, there is some coherence and reformist vision during the mandate. If the next ministry preserves at least 80% of the reformist achievements of our ministry, I am confident they will build on what is already there.
This is because of the way I am working – I am documenting everything. When I first took this position, I was given a one-page hand-written report. There was nothing on the computers. As chair, along with my colleague Tamer Amine, we held three meetings just to gather files and the tasks of the Department of Education.
Then I spoke with Anis to understand the history I had missed. I started with nothing, and in this department, only the chosen few from below get to work. You don’t know what you don’t know.
One thing I did was to open a direct line and institutionalise it, which I will advise the succeeding minister to maintain – a call centre on the minister’s desk. Anyone can call it. It might take time, but they can call. Anyone – students, educators, employees – can use the centre to voice grievances. I automated the system. Whatever grievances are registered during my mandate are documented. A staff member analyses the patterns. From there, I learned what the key issues are.
Right now, we cannot make major strategic changes because there are too many leaks, and you have to cover all of them in a system that is not functioning properly.
For example, when it comes to the equivalencies, I am working on short-term interventions alongside a long-term plan.
How will you institutionalise the long-term plans?
I will start working toward certain things. I worked on a draft law, and if I cannot pass it during my term and they want it, they will pass it later – just like I did with an older law from Mneimneh. That one concerned qualifications for anyone entering the teaching profession. They were professionalising it, so we had a committee team, made recommendations, refined it, and now it has been passed. That is long-term.
We are also working on partnership platforms because we do not know which NGOs are working with the ministry. NGOs show up in schools, and if they make mistakes, the media says they were authorised to enter the school – but we don’t even know who is working with us. There is no process.
The database and software are under the project. There were IT licenses that were expiring, and no one had told me about them. Do you know what that means? All the data would expire with the license.
I categorised the call centre and linked it to a database, and so on.
For IT, I organised the unit and we are going to set the terms of reference. I want to try to integrate it into the internal system. This technically requires a law, but I am working without one for now.
We are also trying to find a platform for the finance department. Imagine the project I mentioned earlier: most of the funding and the key decision-makers sit at the top of the project, and anyone who wants access simply uses their networks – connections.
For example, when it comes to school renovations, this is the most heavily funded area. There are schools that have been renovated twenty times, while others do not even have a roof. Some of the schools renovated twenty times have around twenty students, while the roofless schools have a thousand students.
As I gain more access to this database, all decisions are made based on criteria that I set for the project. When they tell me there are schools that need renovation, I establish priority criteria and we work accordingly. I started introducing advantages based on the principle that, to be equitable, you give more.
There are entire areas where no one has done anything at all.
Is it possible to institutionalise the Ministry of Education? Everyone blames the absence of institutions, as you said.
They can leave – we’ve got nothing to lose. It is not because they are irreplaceable. They behave as if I am supposed to accommodate them because they are constantly clashing and fighting. They tell me they want to “save me the trouble”, but what that actually means is that they want to do whatever they want.
As you said, what about those who are “below”? Who are they?
The Director General and everyone below him. They did not obstruct things deliberately; they simply would not dare act differently from how they usually do.
What has been institutionalised is a system of “no system”. And 90% of the staff are politically appointed.
The resistance or push-back I am currently experiencing is coming from a group of people who are now [00:08 from audio 3] but this group comes from what is known as the deep state, although it happens to be aligned with a different political party. My staff come from all sects and all religions. The Ministry of Education is the only ministry that draws its power from all sects, both current and former.
What is the capacity to actually get things done in this situation?
I can tell you that it does not work – but I insist that it is shameful if we do not try to crack the system.
Regarding partnerships, some people are praising what is happening, while others feel that the deep state is winning within the Ministry of Education. They feel that you could intervene, that you could support in some way.
Of course I have partners – my team, for example. One of the main people who helped me build teams such as IT is an old colleague from Khaddet Beirut, AUB, and the Business School – especially because my financial resources are extremely limited. These are people whose time is valuable, and they cannot always volunteer.
The committees that worked with Adnan were willing, so we tried. But when I was a school principal, I used to tell people that you need a full school year – nine months – during which you do nothing else, not even catch your breath. If you want to be an effective transformational leader, you need time to understand the system, develop your idea, and study how it can be destroyed. I do not have that luxury.
Still, I am trying to understand the system. From the second week, I was holding meetings with managers and colleagues. I spoke with them for two months, but after that, there was no time at all. I was being attacked with demands to “hold them accountable”, and I cannot. I can decide to let people go, but on what basis? I do not want to use their methods. I need mechanisms to justify dismissing people.
You kept many employees who were politically affiliated with this or that minister and who were not necessarily the most qualified for their positions.
Of course – because when I took on this position, I found that there were no alternatives. I need inspection teams, data, and so on. Everyone gossips, but is anyone ready to provide evidence? On the contrary, they protect one another. If I really wanted to be stubborn, I could have taken action – but that would not have been responsible.
So you had to be pragmatic.
Not only pragmatic – I had to understand the plan first, then act. I did let go of some employees, and I am receiving backlash for it on national television. I have spoken about it openly. It is related to the Examinations Department, which is now in new hands. These are people from within the ministry, but they are qualified. I took recommendations into account, conducted interviews, and I am relying on them to act correctly as civil servants.
What about critical friends – outsiders who are concerned and honest? How can they support your efforts?
At the moment, they are providing something like therapy, simply by listening and talking with me. But honestly, I do not yet know what role they can play. What they can do is submit proposals, and that is what I have started telling them.
They came to me from AUB wanting to conduct impact research – the Council of Higher Education, which is made up of university colleagues – and I asked them to submit proposals.They can help me by telling me if they have seen things. As I was telling you, my hypotheses were not wrong. I do not need more people telling me what is not working. What we need – if I compare it to medicine – is an emergency-room intervention, not a surgical one. There is a huge difference between stitching a wound and scheduling surgery, and this is exactly where we are.
What can they do?
They need to come with solutions, with proposals. Zaher, from the Council of Higher Education, has been holding multiple meetings and working overtime to address the issues we face, and he has my green light to do so. Anyone who comes to me and is genuinely supportive of my work has my full backing, and I remind them that my door is open. But I do not have the luxury – when everything around them is so random, threatening, and unreliable – to do much more. They all know this, and the strongest evidence is that I stepped away from my own project with confidence and no one felt the difference. If I had been working individually, the project would have collapsed.
Are you hopeful this will happen in the ministry as well, or is it difficult?
I deal with them the same way I deal with my team. The problem, as I mentioned, is that it all depends on whether the succeeding minister accepts that I am willing to be their consultant – for free – for the next six months, and is willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. We could make a significant difference.
If they do not feel threatened.
What else can I do?
What about teachers?
I launched a campaign and I am in direct contact, via WhatsApp, with educators and principals from 160 schools. The campaign follows the same concept I worked with in Khaddet Beirut. I set criteria for strong public schools and wanted to ensure they would not collapse while the entire system is collapsing. I selected them because they are resilient and their staff are hardworking. I set clear criteria and told them they would receive certain privileges. I would support them by easing obstructive administrative procedures, support their initiatives if they developed improvement plans, and finance those plans. Eighty of the 160 schools received USD 10,000 in funding, financed through Middle East [Airlines?]. You might ask whether this saves the system. No – but it preserves its image. These schools are now visible: on the website, on social media, and elsewhere. Because they are spread across Lebanon, they represent the strongest schools in every region.
Can I ask about the priorities? One of them is the deal with the private sector and the freedom historically given to it. What is your approach to the private sector?
We want to activate quality assurance, which already has a proposal from the Educational Centre for Research and Development. If people want to help me, they need to look at the reference framework developed at the centre and try to translate it into policies – or work with the policies I already have on this topic. I can then provide a proposal on how to move it forward.
For the private sector?
You asked about the private sector, and we now have a reference framework proposal to ensure quality for all.
What about funding the private sector?
Change theory teaches us to be very careful about where we intervene in a system. In some areas, intervention generates maximum resistance, and that is counterproductive. You need to strike the system at a strategic point. I believe that insisting on quality assurance in higher education is a priority. There is a committee currently working on setting criteria for quality assurance in private universities – they are finalising it.
Back to civil society – can it support reform and help confront the deep state?
I will speak about those who reached power. There is a group of MPs [05:32 from audio 4], one of whom is very dear to my heart. They were so overwhelmed that they did not even take the time to hear my side when I was under attack. Instead, they supported those who were attacking me.
Can we talk about the associations of retired educators? Some claim you are more supportive of the associations and less supportive of the independent contract teachers’ unions, and that you are under pressure from the government.
There is no pressure at all – there is a choice. Unfortunately, and I have said this to them directly, they were attacking me and asking me, as Minister of Education for the entire country, to break the law. The law recognises the official association that represents educators, and I have an official role with it. They want me to behave like an activist, which I am not. I am an employee. I want to model what it means to be an employee within a pluralistic society that holds different positions, and to have the capacity to accommodate everyone.
So I opened my door to everyone.
The result was that the least trustworthy – those who backstab, those who make agreements and then do the opposite – are my own people, whom I consider myself part of, with whom I carried out a revolution. I had been in my position for three days and they were already pressuring me, even though I told them I needed time to collect data, conduct a study, and see what could realistically be done. Nadine sat on this very chair and said, “You’re right, but how am I going to face them outside?” When she went to confront them, the outcome was that the associations – supposedly part of the deep state – ended up bargaining with me. In the end, had I not been in a dispute with the Minister of Finance, he would not even have agreed to receive them.
They were bargaining for deals, asking not to strike at the beginning of the academic year. She refused to bargain.
The largest groups opposing me are the contract teachers who are aligned with her – despite the fact that they were the first group I treated fairly.
They do not think it was enough.
Of course it was not enough. I am repeating this, and I would not dare say it publicly: the government is bankrupt. When the original association came with a proposal, I invited all the associations here and told them, “Listen, I am on your side, but this is the reality at the Ministry of Finance – they do not even see you.”
There is a lot of populism. Let me tell you something, I know it’s not easy. I have the privilege of being an employee – that is what I am at the end of the day. But those who are union leaders, MPs, or similar positions face a different challenge: “How do I keep getting elected?” The same applies to the associations. It is a very thin line, and I understand them to some extent, because you have to speak their language and compromise. In reality, it is not me who is being suffocated by the deep state – it is them. I am still standing my ground. For two months, everyone gossiped about me, and not a single MP came to my office.
As an idea – but don’t talk about the union because it applies to everyone – political offices visited me. I spent all that time receiving them. They came at a specific time asking for many things. At first, I tried to understand them to a certain extent – we have to accept them; these are the people. When there is an area I cannot access except through the educational office, what choice do I have? Forget the idea that it exists, or that talk to the educational office. So I spoke with the educational office and asked them to tell me their demands. I also spoke with the other people in the area to reassure them that the educational office is ignoring some schools because they don’t work according to their preferences. I spoke with those schools. But during the meeting of the educational office – where he thought they could give me orders about what I should do in his area, I was a step ahead. He sat here, opened a notebook, and he had three pages from their MP. They closed the meeting after fifteen minutes.
Let me ask you about these inspection bodies.
Boat.
I mean the deep state has infiltrated everywhere.
Because here I’m not thinking in terms of building a state and institutions, it requires inspection.
And this is what I was hoping for.
How much support do you have from senior leadership – the Prime Minister, political leaders, the judiciary?
I have a lot of support from the Prime Minister, but he’s fighting the same battle I’m. And he’s also coming from outside the system – clean, lawful, well-intentioned – trying to navigate an unbelievable territory. He needs to prove that he’s Sunni, and he needs to deal with an administration that also has a deep state embedded in it because he cannot run it alone, we’re not Haroun al-Rashid, we’re stuffed inside the ship.
So how are we ever going to get rid of these people from the ship? Do you think it’s possible?
I count a thousand times before I say, “Dr Nawaf, why did you do this?” or before I interpret what he’s doing based on my expectations.
Support the mini acts of success. That is what we need to do. This is what allows us to keep a foothold in these spaces. Maybe I will be a martyr to this attempt, but if I don’t prove anything, then I will prove that I don’t have political backing. My only backing is Nawaf.
I don’t have sectarian backing.
But that is still not enough.
Of course it’s not enough, of course it’s not enough.
Because you don’t have institutions, or systems, or laws.
Exactly. But I’m showing them what this can look like and how you can stand your ground and I need people to recognise that I managed to do things.
In your opinion, is there a possibility of strengthening inspection – meaning all of this is a struggle. Is there a possibility?
As it’s done below – there are people.
I’m trying to, as much as possible – not as much as I would like, as someone before me said that the government has failed. But as an example, there were appointments issued in Tripoli, very good. They were successful in appointing these people whom they placed in the Rashid Exhibition.
So the criteria – are you able to set the criteria you want for appointments?
Yes, absolutely.
So removing the decision on regularisation – this is because there are many –
I told them, “I’m not taking it unless I’m convinced.” And now I have regularised one person in a key position because he had been marginalised repeatedly and because he doesn’t have long before retirement. I felt that even if I made a mistake, there was not much time left for him to retire, and because he opened a helpful door for me.
So you’re not going to proceed according to the law? Will you proceed with regularisation?
There is currently no law that obliges me to regularise now.
Now the first layer – I placed them, they are ready to be announced.
So will there be a possibility that we have a shortage of civil servants? That is why we always bring in consultants from outside.
No, no.
I mean, here in the ministry – will there be a possibility that these people are regularised?
I don’t want to regularise them. I want to regularise those who deserve it. I have now appointed a Director of Examinations. There is something called the Planning Directorate – I appointed a civil servant. At first, she was kicking and screaming, but I will regularise her now. I appointed someone under the Director General – they are civil servants.
What about people who are…
Georgia is with UNICEF.
I know, but they are replacing a layer that does not exist – because it does not exist.
They are not replacing it, believe me this is governance. What I’m doing now – and now Fadi Makki also recently discovered that this needs to be done – is that in our ministries there is no such thing as a strategic planning unit.
I’m now building the governance of a strategic planning unit from my experience with my consultants.
Will these become civil servants?
I hope some of them will.
What I see is that the minister should have a unit under them, not under the Director General, so that they show them “Look, this previous minister reached this point. Take the objectives, here is the data, here is the IT system, here is access to everything.” And the strategic planning unit – when you go to other ministries, you convene the team like a board of Deans. Fadlo Khoury has his own team and a provost, and so on.
Will these become civil servants?
Yes.
And without them, it won’t work out, the way the ministry is structured – especially given the period we’re entering. The coming period requires transformational change, not maintenance. This minister, if they don’t come with a team – if I didn’t have Georgia, who understands donors
Yes, because they are coming in as experts. They are not sustainable within the institution.
Totally. That is exactly what I’m saying. I’m giving you the proposal for sustainability. First, the office – there is now something called the Joint Directorate under the minister. I arrived and found it placed in a corner, so I activated it. There is a legal department. Previously, transactions were being processed without being registered. I don’t process any transaction now unless it’s registered in the department. So I activated this department, but it sits within finance. And finance here is part of the state. The other finance is disconnected from the entire world. So now I brought in an expert to fix the other finances.
So these are structural changes.
Yes, and I’m doing them. But these are invisible; how do you explain to them where you’re going?
But it’s good to mention
Yes. The second thing we’re doing is activating the Joint Directorate. We will create a unit called the Strategic Planning Unit within central IT – like a VP for IT. It needs to be embedded there. It will have civil servants within it. The minister comes in with their team, and that team immediately appoints advisers at that level. They recruit these people.
I have the regularisation and full-time appointment of Lebanese University staff – the law regulating full-time appointment and the enforcement of that law so it becomes standard practice.
I also have regularisation in technical and vocational schools; there is a law that is now going to be implemented.
There is also the issue of studying needs in schools so that we can proceed with regularisation decisions accordingly.
Staffing needs?
Yes – human resources.
We are working on this file now.
I am working across every strategic unit so that whoever succeeds me will not be completely disconnected from those below them. That is a major agenda item.
We are working on training principals.
So if you want to help me, you go into the education centre – which currently has nothing. There are vacancies, not temporary assignments.
I heard there are over seventy or ninety.
Yes. You can look into this. I spoke with Fadi from USJ – they were organising a think tank, and I begged them not to do that.
We are thinking of a policy document or a pressure document.
I am telling you: take on the centre, because this is a file I will not be able to resolve – it is heartbreaking. This is our territory, and you will be able to understand it. Think about your centre and how it can be activated within the ministry.
