Relationship between Educational Inequalities and Student Capabilities: A Socio-institutional Analysis of schooling and its Consequences in KRG

Abstract

The central issue of this research is justice within the education system, particularly regarding whether high school graduates are adequately equipped with the necessary skills and abilities to attend universities. The core principle of justice revolves around the concept of equality. However, interpretations of “equality of what?” vary among scholars. Amartya Sen proposed a new approach that prioritizes substantive freedom and capabilities. This approach enables us to think about the role of education, process, and content in innovative ways beyond neoliberal discourses and quantitative policy directives. Thus, the main goal of the research includes the clarification of the existence of educational inequality, its aspects in schools of the educational system, and the impacts on student empowerment. This study is qualitative in that it uses a phenomenological approach to semi-structured interviews with sixteen (16) teachers about their experiences with inequality in Kurdistan’s educational institutions. The significant finding of research revealed that the educational system is beset by a number of inequalities that impact the abilities of both teachers and students, especially, the process of empowering students with new skills such as creativity, new technologies, and life skills is not achieved by merely passing through the stages of education. In other words, education alone does not equip students for empowerment. So, there is a difference between education as a fundamental process to building human capacity and schooling which is need for work and life.