Education of Disadvantaged Children in OIC:
The Key to Escape from Poverty
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offerings at the pre-school levels385. Private schools are more numerous at the pre-school stages,
thereby somewhat compensating for the lack of public school offerings for those age groups.
Private schools diminish through the primary level and taper off to forming a very small part of
total schools at the secondary stage. The private schools at primary and secondary level in Jordan
are typically elite expensive schools. Private schools can charge fees and therefore they have more
resources and tend to perform better than public schools.
Supply-side: Quality
Teacher qualifications: Teacher quality in Jordan is constrained by problems in recruitment and
selection, as well as training on both the pre-service and in-service levels. The main challenges
revolve around the lack of support or motivation of teachers, the unsuitable initial and continuing
teacher education (28% of public school teachers received pre-service training and only 43%
received in-service training in the past two years386) and the lack of appeal of the teaching
profession to high quality applicants (relatively lower admissions criteria for education
programs). This leads to low education quality and poor performance of students in national and
international assessments (as seen in earlier sections).
Areas with fewer resources such as the South of Jordan and rural areas faced steeper challenges
in recruiting qualified teachers given their budget constraints and the few incentives provided for
teachers to work there. This affects performance, with 81% of students in rural schools failing the
Tawjihi as against 47% of all schools.
Disability. There is a lack of adequate training for public school teachers and staff working with
students with disabilities and special needs as well as a lack of coordination between the training
and curricula offered by the Ministry of Social Development (in charge of students with moderate
to severe mental disabilities) and the ones in the MoE.
Curriculum: Another main supply-side quality challenge pertains to the national curriculum and
assessment system that are considered outdated and do not meet the labour market
requirements387 . In spite of some of the curriculum reforms between 2009 and 2016, according
to the HRD report, there is still “too much emphasis on rote learning and on traditional pedagogies
and delivery techniques”388 . The MoE reformed the curricula and textbooks of grades 1-3 in 2014
but external reviews concluded that the revisions did not improve basic primary level
competencies389.
385 EMIS Database MoE
386 NCHRD (2016)
387 NCHRD (2016)
388 NCHRD (2016)
389 NCHRD (2016)