Quality Education

Chapter Overview

1. Executive Summary

This chapter begins with a decisive point: Iraq has greatly expanded access to education, but cannot equate a student's presence in a classroom with human capital formation. Official statistics recorded approximately 6.784 million primary pupils in the 2023/2024 academic year. In 2025/2026, the Ministry of Education announced that more than 12 million pupils and students had enrolled across general education stages, then referred in early 2026 to approximately 13 million. This is an enormous national cohort: even a small flaw in learning quality is repeated across millions of people and becomes a broad economic and institutional constraint within a decade. ¹

Yet the strongest available baseline for learning outcomes demands greater caution. The first national fourth-grade mathematics and science assessment, covering 11,966 pupils in 320 schools across 15 federal governorates, found that only 39.5% passed mathematics and 34.1% science, and explicitly identified a need to strengthen reading and conceptual application skills. Iraq and the Kurdistan Region also participated in fourth-grade TIMSS 2023, but their results did not meet international publication standards. This is not a “ranking scandal”, but an institutional signal that building a reliable, stable assessment system is itself part of education reform. ²

Conversely, there are signs of improved access. The first National Human Capital Report in Iraq, published in 2026, reports net primary enrolment rising from 88% in 2020/2021 to 96% in 2024/2025. The National Development Plan 2024–2028 targets 99% in primary, 70% in intermediate and 40% in preparatory education, and includes curriculum and examination development, staff training and the construction of 3000 schools among its instruments. Iraq therefore already has a national direction for reform. Vision 2045's task is not to create a parallel strategy, but to raise the standard of outcomes and connect access to learning, skills and the transition to life beyond school. ³

The chapter accordingly adopts four shifts. The first is from “completing the curriculum” to “mastering the fundamentals”: no student should leave a stage unable to read with understanding or use basic mathematics. The second is from a school that delivers instruction to one that develops character and skills: collaboration, communication, discipline, health, citizenship, digital literacy, curiosity and the capacity to learn. The third is from a final examination determining a student's fate to an assessment system combining classroom diagnosis, independent national assessment and reliable examinations. The fourth is from a token labour market connection to learning pathways that allow academic and vocational students to change direction without stigma or dead ends.

Teachers are the turning point. A modern curriculum cannot work in classrooms that push teachers to lecture rapidly to complete overloaded content, nor can brief training compensate for the absence of a structured career path. The Vision therefore proposes a national teaching profession standard, recurring practical training within schools, promotion linked to performance and professional growth rather than qualifications and seniority alone, support for headteachers as leaders of learning, and protection of teachers' time from administrative work that adds no value.

On infrastructure, the Vision does not treat construction as an educational solution in isolation. The Ministry of Education's stated need in 2026 ranged from approximately 7 thousand to 10 thousand additional schools to relieve bottlenecks, while it announced continuing construction and rehabilitation and hundreds of new schools entering service. Infrastructure is necessary because it restores learning time and reduces double shifts and overcrowding, but the investment criterion is an “effective learning place”: a safe building, sufficient time, a suitable teacher, water, sanitation, electricity and connectivity, management, learning materials and outcomes. ⁴

By 2045, the Vision does not seek a “smart school” in the promotional sense, but a system that learns from its data: a unified student record, traceable attendance, dropout and transitions, published national assessments, school reports that identify needed support rather than punish poor communities, and additional funding for the most disadvantaged areas. The system builds on existing EMIS and iTALEEM rather than parallel platforms: iTALEEM was launched in 2024 to target more than 100 thousand teachers and 30 thousand schools, while UNICEF indicated in 2026 that approximately two million children attended schools with an Education Management Information System. ⁵

2. From People as the Greatest Resource to Schools as Engines of Capability

The previous chapter established that population does not become strength through numbers alone; human capital forms when health, education, skills and opportunity become productivity and effectiveness. This chapter addresses the largest national institution working daily on that transformation: the school. A school is neither a building nor a miniature ministry; it is a long-term formative system shaping language, logic, habits, expectations, discipline, cooperation, health and the capacity to learn.

Two opposite errors must be avoided. The first is to burden schools with every social and economic crisis: they cannot create a job simply by producing a better graduate. The second is to reduce their role to “delivering a curriculum”, leaving universities or employers to rebuild the foundations. The Vision separates responsibilities: general education builds a shared intellectual and human foundation and transferable skills; vocational training adds specific occupational skills; universities develop deeper specialist knowledge; and the labour market develops experience. When each level fulfils its role, the cost of moving between them falls.

3. Definitions and Methodological Boundaries

The evidence base in this chapter spans several years because Iraq does not publish every indicator in the same year. We use 2023/2024 for complete school statistics published by the Statistics Authority, 2024/2025 where a newer national indicator is available, and 2025/2026 for operational developments such as enrolment numbers, construction and examinations. These years are not silently merged into a single series, and older figures such as “3.2 million out of school” are not used as a 2026 baseline without a clear date and methodology.

4. Iraq's Baseline: Major Expansion and a Learning Gap

4.1 Access and scale

Official primary education statistics for 2023/2024 record 6,784,466 pupils in public, private and religious primary schools, with 1,090,050 new entrants. The National Human Development Report gives 17,616 public primary schools operating in 12,575 government buildings, with an estimated building shortfall of 5,041 that year. This gap helps explain multiple shifts and overcrowding, but does not reduce educational quality to buildings. ⁶

In 2025/2026, the Ministry of Education announced more than 12 million pupils and students enrolled in general education, including over 1.2 million in the first primary grade. In January 2026 it then referred to approximately 13 million pupils and students and a need for thousands of additional schools. Both figures may be used as administrative updates with different timing and definitions, rather than as a precise growth series before unified annual statistical tables are published. ⁷

4.2 What do students learn?

The national fourth-grade mathematics and science assessment is the most important anchor because it measures an educational outcome rather than an input. Low pass rates in mathematics and science, together with observed weaknesses in reading and applying concepts, mean that the problem is not “one subject being harder than another”, but a foundation spanning several skills: reading is necessary to understand mathematics problems and science texts, and application requires more than recalling information. ⁸

The World Bank's 2024 human capital review offers a complementary indicator of the accumulating gap: Iraq's learning-adjusted years of schooling were estimated at only approximately four years, although a child may spend far more years in school. This comparative indicator does not replace national assessment, but explains why learning must be measured rather than years of attendance alone. ^9101112

4.3 Time and environment

When a building operates two or three shifts, time for learning, breaks, activities, family contact and teachers' professional development is compressed. UNICEF provides a historical example in which the primary certificate examination pass rate was 92% for morning shifts versus 72% for evening shifts, using data to diagnose the problem. We do not adopt these rates as a 2026 baseline, but they methodologically justify including “actual learning time” in the national indicator dashboard rather than relying solely on building numbers.

5. From Memorisation to Understanding

Memorisation is a natural part of learning; thinking cannot take place in a knowledge vacuum. The problem begins when recalling text becomes the final objective, and when schools can award high grades to students who do not understand what they have read or cannot use information in a new context. The Vision therefore proposes not “abolishing memorisation”, but reordering the hierarchy: foundational knowledge → understanding → application → analysis → constructing an argument or solution → transferring learning to a new problem.

The classroom shift occurs through three practical changes. First, reduce curriculum overload and focus on core concepts: teachers racing through page counts tend to lecture. Second, design lessons that begin with a question, problem, text or experiment, then build the necessary knowledge. Third, use assessments that measure understanding and application, because teachers and students adapt to what examinations reward.

1. A mastery standard: Set clear national thresholds for each stage in reading, writing, mathematics, science and digital literacy, giving students early remedial support before gaps accumulate.

2. Daily reading time: Guided and independent reading and discussion of texts in every grade, not only language lessons, because reading is the infrastructure of every subject.

3. Meaningful mathematics: Connect mathematical procedures to representations, problems and explanations; do not reward memorised steps without understanding why they work.

4. Science through experiment: Simple, safe experiments, inquiry and data interpretation; a fully equipped laboratory is not necessary for every concept, but observation, hypothesis and measurement must become habits.

5. Rapid remedial teaching: Brief diagnostic assessments at the beginning and middle of the year, with flexible support groups rather than repeating an entire year because of a specific skills gap.

6. School as a Workshop for Character and Skills

A school that produces students who know content but cannot keep an appointment, work in a team, present an idea, manage disagreement or verify digital information leaves an essential part of human capital outside the curriculum. Conversely, turning “skills” into another theoretical subject reproduces the same problem. Skills are built through structured practice.

This function must remain separate from political indoctrination. Civic education in Vision 2045 means the constitution, rights and duties, pluralism, rules of debate and public action, and protection of public money, rather than testing loyalty to a government, party or single narrative. Schools develop citizens capable of thinking within a shared state, not followers afraid to ask questions.

7. Teachers: The Profession That Cannot Be Bypassed

No technology or platform can compensate for a teacher unable to diagnose students' understanding, construct questions, manage a classroom and give feedback. The National Education Strategy 2022–2031 therefore explicitly prioritises teacher development, including a direction towards requiring a university degree as the profession's minimum qualification, recruitment and deployment standards, and continuing professional development linked to career progression. iTALEEM also targets more than 100 thousand teachers.

The Vision builds a “career ladder”, not a training course. New teachers enter a school-based induction and mentoring period, then progress from practising teacher to senior teacher, mentor or subject leader on the basis of evidence of performance, training and context-sensitive student learning, rather than raw student scores alone. Assessment must not punish teachers working in poor schools; it compares progress and considers school conditions.

• Redesign pre-service preparation to increase practical training in real classrooms.
• Provide brief, recurring professional development tied to a specific teaching problem, with lesson viewing, observation and feedback.
• Reduce arbitrary teacher transfers and map needs by subject, school and stage.
• Offer incentives for difficult, rural and disadvantaged areas rather than leaving deployment to personal or administrative influence.
• Protect teachers from violence and humiliation while establishing a clear route for student and family complaints and professional discipline.

8. The Curriculum: Less Overloaded, Greater Depth

The national curriculum must answer three questions: what knowledge does every Iraqi need, what skills must they be able to apply, and what constitutional and social values govern coexistence? The progression across school years is built after that. Reform that adds a new chapter for every public issue produces a larger textbook rather than better learning.

The Vision adopts a periodic review every five years, with lighter annual updates where necessary, using Learning Progressions to prevent repetition and gaps. Every change undergoes a time-burden test: can an average teacher in an ordinary school teach the content in depth within the year's actual hours? If not, the problem is curriculum design, not “teacher shortcomings”.

9. Assessment and Examinations: What We Measure Is What We Teach

In a centralised, high-stakes system, ministerial examinations can protect equality and confidence but steer the entire curriculum towards what they measure. National examinations should therefore not be dismantled before a fairer alternative exists; they should improve gradually through more applied questions, banks of anchor items enabling comparison over time, test-item analysis, and published skill performance reports rather than pass rates alone.

Three functions must be separated: teachers' daily assessment to guide instruction; sample-based national assessment to measure the system; and certificate examinations to determine progression or admission. Trying to make one test fulfil all three distorts outcomes.

10. School Quality and Leadership

Headteachers are the closest officials with daily capacity to turn policy into a functioning classroom. Their role therefore shifts from merely signing correspondence and monitoring attendance to leading learning: tracking attendance, observing lessons, analysing results, deploying teachers, supporting struggling pupils, engaging families and protecting teaching time. They receive decision-making latitude coupled with accountability.

Existing school management programmes in Iraq support this approach. By 2035, every school should have a simple annual improvement plan and a small flexible grant based on pupil numbers and local deprivation. The grant must not create a parallel budget or finance arbitrary purchases; it is linked to a specific learning problem and a monitoring indicator.

11. School Time, Overcrowding and Multiple Shifts

Resolving the building shortage is not a separate construction objective. The priority is to restore actual learning time and an environment permitting interaction. The national infrastructure plan therefore uses a “school pressure indicator” combining pupils per classroom, number of shifts, weekly teaching hours, building condition, water and sanitation, electricity/cooling, distance, population growth and learning outcomes. Priority then goes to projects that release the most learning time and relieve the greatest pressure, rather than those with the highest political visibility.

The Development Plan 2024–2028 includes building 3000 schools, while the Ministry of Education has announced continued implementation of the thousand-school projects and others. Vision 2045 builds on these commitments without counting them again as new projects. It adds only a planning rule: every new building must enter an educational asset register connecting capacity to location, demand and maintenance plans, so that resolving building shortages does not create a maintenance crisis.

12. Educational Equity: Place, Income, Sex and Disability

Equity does not mean spending the same amount on every student. Small rural schools, students with disabilities, children returning from displacement, girls at risk of dropout and working children require different costs to reach the same outcome. Funding therefore includes a needs-weighted component.

The “Back to Learning” campaign in 2025 illustrated the value of field tracking. The ministry identified 261,338 cases of dropout or non-enrolment within 45 days, returning more than 30 thousand children to formal education and 36 thousand to non-formal pathways, while approximately 131 thousand complex cases of interrupted education remained, according to the published statement. These figures must not be generalised to all out-of-school children, but show that a good response begins with a name, cause and return pathway rather than an abstract national percentage.

Inclusive design must include physical adaptations, alternative materials and methods, teachers trained in inclusion, assistive devices, and health and social referrals. Social protection should also connect to education through carefully designed conditional incentives, while avoiding punishment of families where absence results from a lack of schools or transport, or disability.

12.1 Health, nutrition and the school environment as conditions for learning

The brain does not separate education from its environment. Lack of water and sanitation, extreme heat, hunger, poor vision or hearing, violence and bullying, or chronic anxiety all turn attendance time into less learning. This chapter does not, however, turn schools into a parallel health system. It defines only the minimum protecting students' capacity to learn, leaving comprehensive health policy to the Health and Human Capital chapter.

Vision 2045 adopts a “school fit for learning” standard before any cosmetic classification: safe drinking water, usable toilets responsive to sex and disability, electricity and appropriate ventilation/cooling, structural safety, room for movement, management of violence and bullying, health referrals where necessary, and an absence mechanism connected to health conditions. These are not luxury additions; they are inputs protecting attendance, attention and dignity.

School feeding is initially targeted rather than universal, prioritising poorer areas and early grades and connecting it to attendance, local health and reliable food procurement. The National Education Strategy and Iraq's commitment at the Transforming Education Summit referred to gradual expansion of school feeding. Vision 2045 makes expansion conditional on evaluation: effects on attendance, concentration and dropout, and meal cost and safety.

13. Early Childhood and Foundations Before First Grade

Quality education begins before first grade. UNICEF's 2023 report indicated that nine out of ten children did not receive early education, while the National Development Plan targets net kindergarten enrolment of 15% by 2028. The gap is large, so the Vision does not seek universal access to costly conventional kindergartens within a few years, but a phased, high-quality expansion beginning in the most disadvantaged areas and linking kindergartens to teacher preparation, health, nutrition, language and play.

By 2045, at least one year of high-quality early education should be practically available to every child, with a broader pathway for the preceding two years according to capacity and need. The quality of the early years matters more than the speed of coverage: an early childhood centre without a qualified teacher, play space or appropriate child-to-teacher ratio may produce attendance rather than development.

14. Data, National Assessment and EMIS

Iraq cannot manage a system of this scale through disconnected spreadsheets. EMIS is the infrastructure, but the objective is not digitising forms; it is building student, school and teacher records that track attendance, transitions, dropout, outcomes, facilities and staffing while protecting privacy. Administrative identity should be separated from research assessment data where individual linkage is unnecessary.

An annual “State of Learning in Iraq Report” is established, covering access, attendance, learning time, outcomes in target grades, gaps between governorates, school/rural conditions, sex, disability and programme progress. It publishes contextual models and annual progress rather than raw school rankings that harm poor schools.

14.1 Families, communities and private tutoring

Schools cannot be improved only within their walls. Families influence attendance, reading, expectations and pathway choices, but the Vision rejects the assumption that every family has the time, knowledge or money to compensate for school shortcomings. The public system's duty is to make success possible through school itself, rather than through purchased parallel lessons. When private tutoring becomes an unspoken prerequisite for success, it signals a gap in classroom time, teaching methods, examination design or families' trust in schools.

Every school therefore establishes a simple channel of communication with families on attendance, skills progress, support needs and guidance between stages. Higher-need schools allocate free support sessions after school or within an extended day, with rules preventing conflicts of interest between regular teaching and paid tutoring for the same pupil. The purpose is not to criminalise supplementary private education, but to prevent it becoming a parallel layer determining who can buy success.

Local communities are treated as partners in the learning environment, not as a source of interference in professional decisions. Parent and community councils can support safety, attendance, activities, reading and career guidance, but teacher selection, student grades and scientific content remain governed by national professional standards. Participation strengthens accountability when powers and boundaries are clear.

15. Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence in Education

An electronic board does not create modern education if lessons remain rote instruction. Technology is useful when it solves a specific problem: content for remote schools, teacher training, rapid diagnostic assessment, resources for people with disabilities, attendance management or individual support. It must work in Iraqi conditions where electricity, connectivity and devices may vary.

Artificial intelligence enters as an “assistant under human responsibility”: helping teachers prepare examples and questions, helping students practise, translating or simplifying, and analysing non-sensitive data. The Vision prohibits using it for unreviewable, high-impact decisions about students, broad behavioural surveillance, or entering personal data into unapproved services. Examinations are redesigned to measure understanding and original achievement rather than relying solely on a battle to ban AI tools.

16. Linking Education to the Labour Market Without Turning Schools into Narrow Training Centres

The labour market changes faster than curricula. The best long-term connection is therefore not teaching every student a specific job, but building foundations that make retraining possible. Reading, mathematics, functional English, digital literacy, communication and self-management form “transition infrastructure” needed by workers, engineers, technicians and entrepreneurs.

Career exploration begins in intermediate education: introductions to occupations, visits, projects, pathway information and guidance not determined by family status or social perceptions. Preparatory education expands elective subjects and applied modules, making transitions between academic and vocational routes more flexible. Vocational education must not become a route for those who “failed” academically; the quality of the pathway, its connection to standards and opportunities for further study make it attractive.

Coordination with employers occurs through sector skills councils that supply the ministry with information on general skills and changing requirements, but employers receive no right to reduce the curriculum to their present needs. Schools serve the labour market, society, democracy and individuals' lives together.

16.1 Language: Proficient Arabic and functional English

Deep understanding cannot be built in a language students do not command. The Vision therefore treats Arabic as a tool for thinking before treating it as a literary subject: reading informational and narrative texts, writing arguments and summaries, understanding terminology, and using language in science, history and mathematics. This does not mean standardising dialects or abolishing linguistic diversity. A shared school language gives students access to general knowledge, while Kurdish, Turkmen, Syriac and other languages are respected within the constitutional system and local circumstances.

English has a functional, cumulative purpose rather than the memorisation of isolated rules. Attention begins with listening, vocabulary, reading and communication, then gradually moves to academic and professional language. Success in 2045 is not a student completing six years of English textbooks, but a preparatory-school graduate able to read instructions and an accessible source, communicate at a basic level and continue learning. Outcomes are measured through a national sample against a clear reference framework, rather than incomparable school grades.

Technology should support language rather than replace it: digital libraries, audio and pronunciation, graded texts and AI practice tools with data protection. Students relying on machine translation without a minimum language proficiency gain apparent speed but remain less able to verify and understand independently.

16.2 Private and international education: Expanding choice under a national standard

Private and international schools can expand capacity and test new models, but do not release the state from guaranteeing public education or make the market a substitute for regulation. Secondary education statistics for 2023/2024 show that public schools constitute the majority and private schools a substantial part of provision. Regulatory quality is therefore a system-wide issue rather than a marginal one.

The Vision adopts one minimum rule for all: building safety, teacher eligibility, student rights, fee disclosure, a core national curriculum in language and history/citizenship where required, measurable learning outcomes and non-discrimination. Private schools may add a curriculum, language or method, but must not become unregulated spaces or channels for buying incomparable grades.

Conversely, the state must not use licensing to suppress diversity or shield public schools from competition. It publishes standard quality indicators, allows new models to enter, and closes schools failing safety or integrity requirements after a clear corrective process. The ultimate goal is neither a larger nor smaller private share, but educational quality less dependent on families' ability to pay.

17. Governance and Financing

Education is a shared national responsibility. The ministry sets standards, curricula, assessment, the data system and equitable financing; directorates manage resources, support and monitoring; schools own improvement plans and exercise operational discretion; and universities and colleges of education ensure teacher preparation. These levels need clear outcome agreements rather than exchanges of official correspondence.

Financing is not measured by budget share alone. More spending is necessary where buildings and teachers are lacking, but allocation and implementation quality matter more than an isolated number. Expenditure is therefore divided into a base amount per student, weights for deprivation, disability and rurality, infrastructure funding based on school pressure, professional development funding and small improvement grants. Execution is published, not merely allocation.

18. International Comparisons: Mechanisms, Not Copies

The shared lesson is not a “foreign curriculum”, but system coherence: what the curriculum requires is what teachers are trained for; what teachers teach is what assessment measures; and what assessment reveals leads to support, funding and correction. Fragmented reforms fail when every link moves in a different direction.

19. Iraqi Education in 2045

In 2045, children enter school with an appropriate early foundation and sit in classrooms where overcrowding and shifts do not steal much of their day. Teachers know what students should learn by year-end, have diagnostic tools and receive professional support within their schools. Textbooks are less overloaded, classrooms feature more questions and application, and examinations reward understanding. Struggling students are not left until the final examination: they appear in the data and receive early remedial support.

Every school has a reliable digital record and an improvement plan, but technology is as unobtrusive as possible: it streamlines administration and frees time for learning. Employers do not need to test preparatory-school graduates' basic reading, and universities do not begin by reteaching school skills. International comparison becomes an ordinary diagnostic tool rather than an exceptional political event.

20. Stages of Transformation, 2027–2045

21. Indicator and Target Dashboard

22. The Implementation Programme Package

23. Implementation, Cost and Financing Matrix

24. Risks and Safeguards

25. Conclusion and the Bridge to Training and Work

Iraq can build thousands of schools, distribute millions of books and conduct enormous examinations, yet human capital will fall short of its ambition if students do not actually learn. This chapter therefore redefines educational success: not merely remaining in school, but leaving with the intellectual, practical and personal foundations that enable people to learn again and move between pathways throughout life.

The task through 2045 is to make “learning” the unit around which the system converges: curricula serve it, teachers create it, headteachers protect its time, assessment measures it, data reveal its gaps, funding goes to what improves it, and infrastructure provides its environment. Only then does the breadth of Iraqi education become an asset of strength rather than simply the state's largest social expenditure item.

The chapter deliberately leaves a question for its successor. Quality schooling gives students foundations and the ability to learn, but cannot by itself turn them into technicians, professionals or skilled workers, or repair the labour market. This is where V2-D05-C03, “Training and Work”, begins: how can the general capability built by schools become occupational skills, a transition into employment, broader labour market participation and productive work treated as a national value rather than merely a salary?