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innovation (a learning system that learns and involves international and public-private
partnerships) and (e) Mindset (promoting national values and unity).
According to the NHRD report 2016, some of the key challenges adversely affecting the quality
of education delivered in Jordanian schools include:
 Centralized governance of education service delivery as well as teacher training
 Inadequate monitoring and evaluation
 Declining teacher quality, particularly in secondary education
 Inadequate pre-service and in-service training
 Outdated teaching methods at all education levels
 Lack of high quality private schools (including as public-private partnerships (PPPs)) to
complement public provisions
 Lack of parental involvement in children's learning activities
The report also identifies additional challenges specifically for the basic and secondary
schools:
 An outdated curriculum and assessment system
 A high stakes secondary school completion examination (Tawjihi) that the majority of
students fail to clear
 Teaching not an employment of choice
 Lack of in-service training for teachers
 Lack of teacher motivation
 A lack of accountability and leadership throughout the system (school as well as the
 Ministry level).
 A lack of community and family engagement
 A lack of evidence-based decision making
In light of the above, the strategy sets a number of specific target outcomes for four stakeholders
in basic and secondary education -- the government, students, teachers and parents. For the
government, these include (a) making education work and life oriented; (b) promoting research
and data driven policy making (c) disseminating data to show progress on student performance,
teacher quality and other indicators to further drive improvement and (d) achieving
regional/global targets in assessments such as TIMSS, PISA, EGRA & EGMA. For students, target
outcome includes ensuring equitable access to quality teaching and modern curricula. For
teachers, target outcomes include (a) making teaching an employment of choice, (b) creating
adequate incentives for teachers to perform and (c) improving the quality of pre- and in-service
training for teachers. For parents and the community, target outcomes include (a) increase
community engagement to improve school performance and (b) ensuring greater parental
involvement to support student learning in and out-of-school hours.8
To achieve these outcomes and support the five governing principles (or strategic objectives)
underlying the national strategy, the Committee recommended 22 projects. It was also
suggested that progress be assessed using specific key performance indicators (KPI) over a span
of 5 to 10 years. Some of these KPIs are: (a) increasing TIMSS Test Science Scores to 489 (5-year
8 The actual list includes 13 outcomes and an additional 3 for employers.