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under phase 1, ErfKE-II prioritized teacher quality, enhancing the monitoring and evaluation
capacity and revising the curriculum to prepare students for a knowledge-based economy.
UNESCO Jordan not only developed a UNESCO National Education Support Strategy (UNESS,
2008), it also helped developed the new Education Management Information System (EMIS).
Equally UNICEF is working with the government to improve the quality of education in public
schools through launching a programme called “Enhancing quality in primary and secondary
education”, which focuses on innovative ways to improve the quality of learning opportunities
for all students in Jordan. UNICEF also continues to play a key role in assisting the out-of-school
child population. In 2011, it launched the Global Out-of-School Children Initiative (OOSCI) and
profiled excluded children in Jordan and documented the barriers and bottlenecks related to
their exclusion as well as strategies to address the barriers.10
Annother bilateral donor, USAID, has played important role in building local capacity to assess
progress in learning outcomes. The agency helped strengthened the technical capacity of
NCHRD in monitoring and evaluation, and conducting education policy studies and provide
support for programquality evaluations. Notable USAID funded initiative is the four-year (2010-
2015) long MEP project. This was part of the Government of Jordan’s Education Reform for
Knowledge Economy (ERfKE II) program (Ababneh, Lebdih, and Tweissi, 2014).
NGOs such as the Queen Rania Foundation (QRF) and the Queen Rania Teacher Academy (QRTA)
actively work with government schools to better train teachers. In October 2016, the QRTA
launched a nine-month 24 credit hour diploma -- Pre-service Professional Diploma Program
(PPDP). The primary objective is to improve the teachers’ professional standards and enable
them to enter into the teaching profession. The first cohort of PPDP program includes 185
teachers, who were selected through a competitive process. Graduating teachers will commit to
a teaching job with the Ministry of Education for four years.11
Among most recent reform initiatives, earlier in 2017, the government has launched a new
project to improve the quality of education through improved provision of ICT infrastructure.
The Ministry of Education launched the project connecting 2764 schools across Jordan with
internet services and advanced technologies. The initiative will facilitate implementation of the
government projects, such as the online courses developed in partnership with the EDRAAK
platform, which includes Tawjihi level courses in Physics, Mathematics, Chemistry and English.
EDRAAK is also scheduled to launch an online educational content for all levels by next year, in
cooperation with the Ministry of Education (Tabazah, 2017).
3.1.3. Assessment of Learning Outcomes
Jordan has participated in major international assessments of school quality since 1990s. These
include the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Studies (TIMSS) as well as the
OECD’s the Programme for International Student Assessments (PISA). 12 Jordan also participated
in the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) project on Education Data
for Decision Making (EdData II). Jordan is one of the few countries to have participated in both
EMGA and EGRA. In contrast to comparable and reliable data on learning outcomes, data on
10 This was based on the” Five Dimensions of Exclusion” framework.
1
12 For a discussion and overview of Jordan’s involvement in such assessment exercise, see Ababneh, Al-Tweissi
and Abulibdeh (2016).