Matt Salisbury talks to Kurdish Ministers
English Language Gazette, March 2007

A new English language American
University in Iraq is planned – but not
for Baghdad.

It will be based in the outskirts of
Suleimaniyah, a city in the
comparatively safe Kurdish-
controlled region in the north, which is seeing and expansion
of ELT.

In an interview for the ELGazette the Kurdistan Regional Government higher
education minister Dr Idriss Hadi Salih said a charter had been awarded for
a Suleimaniyah-based private American University to be opened ‘next year
or the year after’.

The university aims to reverse the brain drain of Iraqi intellectuals. It will be
part-funded by $10.5 million (£5.32 million) from US agencies – believed to
be the biggest donation for an Iraqi educational project. Teaching will be in
English. It aims to specialise in IT and engineering, but will open with a
small intake for intensive foundation English courses in the spring.

The American institution will follow the region’s first English-language
university, the Kurdistan University Hawler, already running foundation
English courses accredited by the University of Bradford. Science, maths and
medicine at state-run Kurdish universities are now switching to teaching in
English.

The expansion of the sector has led to a shortage of university teachers.
The ministry now runs scholarships ‘for the significant amount of teachers
from Baghdad’ moving to the safety of Kurdistan ‘for security reasons’.
There is a special programme to fill posts with teachers from other parts
of Iraq with a good enough standard of English to teach Kurdish-speaking
university students who don’t speak Arabic. Dr Salih, predicted that continued
expansion of the university sector would fuel the teacher shortage.

Minister for primary and secondary education
Dilshad Abdul-Rahman said, ‘we receive 10
teachers a day’ who are ‘seeking refuge’ from
Baghdad. Kurdistan takes primary and
secondary teachers and pays their salaries for
‘humanitarian reasons’. They can’t use these
teachers because they can’t teach in the Kurdish language.

Kurdistan is introducing an overhauled English-language
school curriculum, assisted by Macmillan, which has an office in the regional
capitalErbil. A staggered system introduces the new curriculum one school
year at a time. Books 7 and 8 – the first and second year of secondary
school – are ready, as is the material for six-year-olds in the first year of
primary school. The Macmillan programme includes cascading training and
training for trainers, but there is still a shortage of English teachers and a
dire shortage of school buildings, with some urban schools teaching in
three shifts.

*JOB ALERT* ELT and subject teachers are urgently required for short or
long-term paid assignments in the safe and stable Kurdistan Region.
Qualified and interested? Email your CV here.