Education of Disadvantaged Children in OIC:
The Key to Escape from Poverty
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Upgrading the physical learning environment. Improving the state of the schools in order to
improve quality of education was an element of the ERfKE but as seen in section 3.3, there is
little budget available for capital expenditures and as such, it has been very difficult to meet this
goal. An interesting initiative to get around this budget shortage is the Madrasati initiative.
Madrasati has mobilized the resources of individuals and over 140 partners from the private
sector and civil society to upgrade the physical and educational learning environments of
Jordan’s most neglected public schools529.
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Results. The evaluation of teachers’ pedagogical knowledge pre and post training has been very
positive. The longer-term results are currently under study.
Source: QRTA website and interviews.
Box 10 Madrasati
Madrasati means ‘my school’ in Arabic and the initiative was launched in 2008 as an affiliate
organization of the Queen Rania Foundation.
Goal. To restore physical spaces and provide supplementary resources most needed at
individual schools such as sanitation products, classroom supplies, technological
equipment etc.
Funding. Funding strategy is based on a combination of individual fund-raising, private sector
fundraising and other civil society organizations’ support (whether financial or in expertise).
Approach. The Ministry of Education identifies which schools are the most underperforming
and resource-poor schools and the Madrasati teams visit the schools to assess which ones need
the most physical renovation. Madrasati, however, go beyond just physical renovation and
combine it with capacity building services.
By partnering with over 45 NGOs (including Queen Rania Teacher Academy, Jordan Education
Initiative, Royal Health Awareness Society etc), Madrasati provide needs-driven programs such
as:
- Personal and professional development opportunities, eg. “ Proud to be a Teacher”
program to help motivate teachers
- Technology in education programs
- Child safety and healthy school initiatives
- Sports for life skills initiatives