Education of Disadvantaged Children in OIC:
The Key to Escape from Poverty
152
teachers’ training and management system as well as the budget process, with the ultimate goal
of increasing the efficiency of the human and financial resources of the sector.
While Jordan is trying to decrease its debt to GDP ratio and thus adopting fiscal tightening
measures, education should not be a sector affected by those measures. On the contrary, spending
could be increased to be on par with other countries at similar level of economic development.
The increased resources should address the capital expenditure shortage, thus slowly shifting the
composition of the expenditures.
In addition, the UNRWA case study pointed to the importance of teacher training and parental
involvement in transforming efficiently limited resources into positive outcomes and student
performance. Their experiences could feed into the Queen Rania Teacher Academy programs and
other interventions aimed at improving the quality of education.
In terms of the future direction of education policies beyond the HRD plans, Madrasatis proved
that involving the private sector can successfully fill gaps in the public sector offerings. There
should be more research and planning to promote low-cost private sector provision and/or
promote public-private partnerships to increase access to and the quality of education offered to
Jordanian and non-Jordanian students.
In terms of technology and education, a flood of global initiatives are interested in working in
Jordan, however it is very important to gauge carefully their usefulness for fear of wasting
resources (time, human and financial) on initiatives that may seem innovative but ultimately may
not be impactful. For example, a recent large-scale randomized evaluation of the “One Laptop per
Child” program in Peru found that expansion of access led to substantial increases in the use of
computers both at school and at home but there was no evidence found of effects on test scores
in math and language409. While the potential for improved quality of education through use of
technology is significant, a set of criteria and frameworks should be put in place to filter which
initiatives should be backed by government and international organizations.
409 Cristia et al (2017)