The outgoing government of Dr Salim Al HOSS had decided in early 2000 to reduce the number of primary and secondary public schools in remote areas. This structural reform entered into effect at the beginning of this academic year 2000-2001. Its main objective is to better use the human resources in the public education sector and to spare some unnecessary spending as it appeared in some cases that the number of staff was greater than the number of students. Taking the effects of this reform into consideration, the Ministry of education puts the total number of schools at about 2200. This number includes all establishments whether public or private, subsidized or not. No extensive survey has been published yet as to the number of schools, the number of administrative staff and the number of teaching staff.

Another important point is worth reporting. The curriculum in the secondary schools was also up-dated during the year 2000 under the authority of the National Center for Pedagogical Research and Development < www.cnrdp.gov.lb >. Some new material relating to computer science and ICT is now required from any student at the baccalaureate level which is the graduating diploma for the secondary level and a pre-requisite for entering the university.

Along with these reforms, a great effort was made during this last quarter 2000 to link together a number of schools through a wide Area Network. The project, coined ‘Schoolnet’, has been launched with a set of 25 schools from the various regions in the country. The linked establishments have the possibility to connect to the Internet although not all connections are easy or reliable at this stage. The Professional Computer Association (PCA) donated the computers and other connecting equipment to help implement the project, an estimated donation of 50,000$.

During the year 1999, a network has been authorized by the Government to provide public and private secondary schools with teaching material < www.cartage.org.lb >. A special program is promoting the use of the Internet for distance learning. This action will be extended to remote locations on the Lebanese territory and hence induce greater visibility on the Web for many schools.

The table below shows the situation at the end of the year 2000.

The main source of information is the Ministry of Education and youth. The given figures are estimations taken from the National Pedagogy Research Center < www.cnrdp.gov.lb >.

Ministry of Education and the Francophone Agency AUPELF grouping universities and other higher learning institutions having the French language in common: < www.lb.refer.org >.

Field research and Internet sources: < www.lebanon-online.com >, < www.sodetel.net.lb >, < www.lebsearch.com > < www.yalla.com.lb >.

According to Mr. Nabil Bukhalid from the American University of Beirut responsible for running the Lebanese Domain Registry (LBDR), there are approximately 1700 registered (.lb) domain names today. He believes however that there are many more sites of Lebanese origin registered (.com) with US providers (Info from The Daily STAR newspaper).

2. Evolution of the WWW Indicators over the whole ESIS II period

The table below gives a clear idea on how the different categories have evolved in relation to www indicator.

As an overall assessment of the situation, we can say:

Beside the above-mentioned remarks, it is a fact that outside the capital Beirut, the state of penetration of the Information Society is still low except for the mobile telephone. This applies to all categories in the table.