Abdulsalm Al-Joufi Minister of Education Prof. Dr. Abdulsalm Aljoufi is the Minister of Education in the Republic of Yemen. Aljoufi holds a Doctorate in Chemistry/ Protein and toxin, UK February 1993 and Masters in Chemistry/Organic, UK in December 1990. Worked in educational field in the following positions as dean of faculty of Education, Ibb University ROY, held the position of Vice President of Ibb University, Vice President of Sana'a University before holding the current position Minister of Education in April 2003. Aljoufi has done several field researches related to education and science and he wrote one book and three are under publishing. He participated in many national and international conferences in Brazil, America and UK.

General Education Quality of Education in Republic of Yemen.

The Government of Yemen, recognizing education to be one of the key factors in reducing poverty and promoting economic development, has spent a large share of public expenditure on education (around 6 percent of GDP), and is committed to increasing the share for education in the coming years. In addition, in the National Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) which was presented to the World Bank and IMF in August 2002, education is identified as one of the key factors in poverty reduction.

The education system consists of Basic education (Grade 1-9) and secondary Education (grade 10-12) with student selecting between the literary or scientific sections in grade 11. Technical and Vocational education is under the supervision of another ministry.

The educational uplift witnessed by the Yemen has witnessed an imbalance between quantity and quality. There was concentration on quantitative expansion in education with neglect of the equality of education. This led to the dangerous low level of the quality of education in general .The poor quality of primary education reflects to some extent the low qualification of teachers, especially in rural areas. The 2002/03 Education Survey estimates that 40 percent of teaching staff hold secondary school certificates or better, while 60 percent have completed only basic education, with one or two years of additional training. Ultimately, this is reflected in the low quality of educational outputs. While primary school curricula and textbooks have been updated recently and in-service teacher training is being expanded, primary education still faces serious difficulties, including inadequate school buildings, shortage of teaching and learning materials, and weak community involvement. Quantitative expansion cannot ever be an alternative to purposeful qualitative development. Based on that the improvement and development of education quality is considered to be the pressing strategic priority through Basic Education Development Strategy (BEDS) grade 1-9.

The objective BEDS is to improve the quality of learning in basic education, with a focus on the systematic and equitable enhancement of school quality. In particular, the plan will pay attention to all of the quality aspects of education, including establishing higher standards of schooling competence learning, in order to promote well recognized and measured learning levels, especially in the three “Rs”. Quality improvement includes teacher development and training, school administration training, and supplying schools with the education resources that are necessary to promote a higher level of learning. Education performance will be monitored through pupil achievement test, which will assess the performance of pupils in grades four and six and nine according to planned competencies every three years to assess their level of achievement.

Construction of infrastructure works alone does not lead to improvement in service delivery. Many instances where the building could not be used because of inadequate teachers, administrators and/or weak management have been known. Building needs to go hand in hand with strengthening the capacity of the administrative units to operate and manage the service delivery aspects so as to ensure that the quality of teaching increases and that more girls are attend school.

Because the link between the basic and secondary education the MOE preparing a plan to build secondary education strategy. The general frame work for this strategy was already discussed in the First National Conference for Basic education in 2002. Improve the quality of education will major issue in the strategy. More attention will directed toward improve stricture of secondary education to have more sections, the curriculum base on specific competence with more time given to practical learning, training teachers to improve their performance in class, train school administration and inspectors on providing ongoing support for teachers and monitoring and evaluation of teachers performance.