LSE Middle East Centre blog — "Re-Governing Education in Kuwait": centralisation and the weakness of the Supreme Education Council, NCED and NBAQ (July 2026)

THE CLAIM. Decades of investment and "uncountable" reform initiatives have not improved quality, and the author attributes this to governance: high ministerial turnover, overlapping responsibilities, weak monitoring and accountability, which he says IMF and OECD reports identify across the public sector. He ties education reform to human-capital goals in the New Kuwait Vision 2035.

THE SYSTEM. Citing recent Ministry of Education statistics: about 1,232 schools, 105,453 teachers and 516,966 students; two public and about fourteen private universities. Governance has been highly centralised in the Ministry since the 1940s.

THE INSTITUTIONS. The Supreme Education Council (1984, advisory) is chaired by the Minister, who appoints its members and decides when it meets; no new members have been appointed since 2018 and it played no role in major decisions, including the suspension of schooling during COVID-19. The National Center for Educational Development (2006) suffered leadership instability and ministerial interference and was abolished by the Minister in September 2025. The National Bureau for Academic Accreditation and Education Quality Assurance (2010) depends on the Ministry of Higher Education and has not assessed Kuwait's higher-education institutions since it was created.

THE PROPOSAL. A new governance structure that redistributes authority, strengthens accountability and brings in other stakeholders.

USE IN A REPORT: an academic's blog post, not peer-reviewed and not official. Useful as context on how public institutions in Kuwait are governed; attribute its factual claims to the author.

The three institutional facts at the centre of the piece — no Supreme Education Council appointments since 2018, the abolition of the National Center for Educational Development in September 2025, and no accreditation assessments by the higher-education quality body since 2010 — are the author's statements and are not referenced to decisions or reports. Where a report relies on one of them, it should be confirmed from the relevant decree or ministerial decision in the Official Gazette.