Education of Disadvantaged Children in OIC:
The Key to Escape from Poverty
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refugee status, minority status (Dom) and socio-economic reasons such as child labour and high
transport costs. On the supply side, governance challenges included inadequate devolution and
decentralization processes, poor budget efficiency, deficient teacher management processes and
general insufficiencies in learning processes. The increasing access trends have been
accompanied by a decline in the quality of education, with worsening performance on
international assessment tests, completion, repetition and drop-out rates. With lower quality, low
job prospects post-graduation and violence in schools, public schools are no longer attractive for
older male students (and to some extent, older female students) in spite of their greater
accessibility. The Syria crisis has only exacerbated these issues with the scarcity of work permits
available for Syrians decreasing incentives to stay in school.
Recommendations
Policies to address Poverty and Location
With poverty being the main obstacle to access to schools, existing financial and in kind support
programmes to poor families must continue to be evaluated, improved, expanded and financed.
This is true for all poor populations in Jordan but especially for refugees since they have limited
access to work permits and as such rely heavily on external assistance.
With poverty correlated to child labour and the latter correlated with higher drop-out rates, it is
important to have updated statistics on income (household survey) and child labour. Since child
labour seemed to be higher in urban centres which are generally easier to survey, at minimum a
detailed child labour survey should be carried out in Amman. The updated income household and
child labour surveys should be made available, at minimum, to all relevant government agencies
as well as international organisations/NGOs in order to inform and better design their
programmes.
Policies toaddress Genderandadolescents
Employment – a long term difficult challenge. Gender parity has been attained but the high and
increasing rates of completion of secondary education, as well as performance in tests, for young
women does not translate into higher numbers of women joining the workforce. Given the level
of investment going into educating women, this low workforce rate is alarming, especially in a
country that is resource poor like Jordan. Its economic development and social aspiration are
dependent on a strong qualified workforce but if half of the population does not join, it constitutes
not only ‘wasted’ education investments but also a serious impediment to further economic
growth. A detailed analysis and survey of the female employment is recommended to form the
basis for campaign, regulations and programs to allow higher female participation.
Employment is a challenge for the country as a whole, including for young men. Opportunities are
few for Jordanians but even fewer for refugees. As such, as the Syria crisis becomes more
protracted, it is likely that a fairly closed labour market will decrease demand for education or in
any case, will remain low. Research into new income-generating opportunities for refugees,
increasing work permits as well as telework (especially for women) would inform policies that
would hopefully increase the perceived usefulness of education.