Educational Reform

Free, compulsory education has been a fundamental policy choice in Tunisia since independence.

Since 1987, reforms were introduced so as to promote the values of modernity, gender equality, openness to the world and civic duty, through education. Ten years later, reevaluation of this reform led to a new law being passed in July 2002, dealing with education and school orientation.

Tunisian schools encourage intercultural understanding through the comparative study of human civilizations and the compulsory teaching of foreign languages. Sciences and modern technologies are also a focus of school curricula.

Today, one Tunisian in four attends school. School attendance for six-year-old girls and boys is almost 100%. Over 30% of young people of between 20 and 24 are at university. There is an increasing demand for the scientific and technological branches. More than 8% of students take the communication technology courses and this choice has in fact grown at an average 21% a year .

Tunisia has massively invested in the necessary technical infrastructure for training in new communications and information technology. Ariana, in Tunis, is the country's main center of technology and ranks as one of the fifty best science centers in the world. The site has two higher institutes that train 1,500 engineers every year up to doctorate level.