Education of Disadvantaged Children in OIC:
The Key to Escape from Poverty
148
Poverty: Demand-side Policy examples
Around 90% of Syrian refugees in Jordan live below the poverty line, compared to 14.5% of the
national population399. As seen in earlier sections, the cost of schooling and child labour are an
important demand-side barriers therefore social protection programmes such as cash transfers
are essential to support access to school. There are social protection programmes in Jordan (see
Annex 4 for more details). These include programs under the National Aid Fund, the Zakat Fund
and the Jordan Hashemite Fund for Human Development.
International organisations/NGOs. There are a few cash and in-kind transfer programs to support
the livelihoods of refugees by UNHCR, Norwegian Refugee Council, Danish Refugee Council, Oxfam
UNRWA. An example of cash transfer that has particularly benefited access to schools is the
UNICEF Jordan Child Cash Grant (CCG) (see Annex 4).
International organisations/NGOs such as WFP, NRC and others have also started organising
buses inside the refugee camps to help transportation of children to schools (and therefore
alleviating the transport cost barriers and safety concerns).
Failing Systems: Supply Side Policy examples400
Teacher training: A large focus of the policies under ERfKE, continued under the HRD strategy,
is on improving quality by reforming teacher policies/professional development as well as
updating the curriculum, assessment and learning resources. Some of the current teacher training
initiatives are being led by the MoE in conjunction with non-governmental initiatives such as the
Queen Rania Teacher Academy (QRTA) (See Annex 4 for further information), the Jordan
Education Initiative (JEI) and the Early Grade Reading and Math Project (RAMP).
Access and schools supply: In order to cope with the increased educational demands stemming
from the refugee influx, the response to the Syrian crisis included 401 setting up44 schools in
refugee camps, 198 double-shift schools established by the MoE, 47 catch-up centres, over 150 in
Makani centres.
Early Childhood Education. As seen mentioned earlier, there is a significant under-supply of
government provided KG1 and KG2 infrastructure, with the majority of physical infrastructure
for ECE offered by the private sector. The HRD strategy plan includes a major sub-component of
the ECE program focusing on the upgrade and expansion of primary school facilities.
Upgrading the physical learning environment: An interesting initiative to get around limited
available budget for capital expenditures (as seen in section 3.3) is the Madrasati initiative.
Madrasati has mobilized the resources of individuals and over 140 partners from the private
399 ODI (2017)
400 More details in Annex 4
401 Brussels (2017) and UNICEF TOR