Type: Explainer

Date: September 1, 2025

Summary

Syria is rewriting its national curriculum. But how do we design a curriculum that prepares students for the Syria of tomorrow? A curriculum that promotes an inclusive national identity, equips students with skills for employment and critical thinking, and addresses the horrors of the war while helping us move forward as a society?

This is not a challenge for the Ministry of Education alone. Every ministry has a stake in shaping this new vision, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which plays a crucial role through educational diplomacy. Educational diplomacy refers to the use of education to support foreign policy objectives, and vice versa. Today, Syria’s education reform coincides with sensitive relationships across our borders, and between Syrian communities. For example, both Syrian and Turkish textbooks portray the other in simplified and negative terms: “Ottoman occupiers” from one side, “Arab abandonment” from the other.

Key insights:

• As Syria is rewriting its national curriculum, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has a key role to play.

• This is through Education Diplomacy, which aligns education and foreign policy objectives.

• This will therefore secure better relationships with close countries like Turkiye and lead to more effective, inclusive curricula within Syria.

Diplomacy can seize the strategic opportunity present here, to build better relationships with neighbouring countries, draw on their technical expertise to develop the curriculum, and support internal cohesion and nation-building. At the Syria Development Center, we are developing an agenda for Syrian educational diplomacy.