Jordan's Educatonal System

Over the last few days we have gone to many lectures about the Jordanian Education system and visited different types of schools. Here is an over view of these lectures and visits.

95% of Jordanians are literate. 2/3 of the illiterate are poor women in the back country.

Jordan has compulsory eduction for all Jordanian children from grades 1 through 12.

In government schools English used to be mandatory starting in 3rd grade, but now it is mandatory for all 12 years of school.

There isn't a formal teacher training program in Jordan.

All students in Jordan take Arabic, math, English, science and history. Islamic religion is also taught in all government schools, but non- Muslim children are excused from the classes.

In the lower grades science is integrated throughout the curriculum, in High School each field,(biology,physics, chemistry, earth science) is taken each year! (Most students study until midnight each night.)

From first grade on, all teachers specialize in a subject. Unlike in America, there are no self contained classrooms. Even first graders will have a different teacher for each subject.

From the 1920's to the 1960's teaching was considered a prestigious occupation and teachers were given a great deal of respect, but since the 70's this has changed drastically. There was an economic collapse in Jordan. Educated people looked outside Jordan for jobs and found that teaching positions did not hold the same respect as other professions and this changed the perception of the public towards education as a profession. Teaching became a low priority. Today teaching is so poorly respected that only the lowest passing students become teachers. The average Jordanian teacher makes 2 to 3 hundred dollars a month. Most take second jobs such as driving taxis or tutoring at night.

There are two types of education in Jordan, public (government) and private. 95% of the middle and uppercase Jordanian children go to private school. There are many private schools, some follow the Jordanian curriculum while others follow the GCSE system ( more about that later). Private school tuition ranges from 500 dinars to 5000 dinars a year. ( 1 dinar is worth about 70 American cents at the moment.)

Public schools have an average of 40 students per class. Private schools average about 20.

Children are rarely held back in the public schools because there is no money for them to repeat the class. There are also no "special education" classes. Children with special needs are mainstreamed in the classroom and teachers are responsible for helping them, although no action is taken against the school or the teacher if these children do not succeed.

At the end of 12th grade all children government schooled children take the Tawjihi (pronounced Tou-gee-hee). It is a comprehensive test given over the course of four days. One for Arabic, one for English, one for math and one for science. The test is purely rote memorization and children are given a book on all the information to memorize before the test. All names and grades are published in the newspaper. This is a left over from the British system. It is similar to the "A levels" that students use to take in Britain and very similar to the "Common Entrance" that students take on the Island of Dominica where I worked in the late 90's.

The only thing that matters when applying to a Jordanian school is the grade one gets on the Tawjihi. A 98 or above-you go to medical school, 95-97 you become an engineer, 90 - 95 you become a pharmacist and so on. Teachers are 65-75%.

Private schools in Jordan can be broken into two categories, the ones who focus on Tawjihi prep and the ones that focus on GCSE. (General Certificate of Secondary Education) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GCSE Those which focus on GCSE do more integrated exploratory lessons and focus on multiple modality, differentiated instruction. Students in private GCSE schools can get their GCSE scores translated into a Tawjihi score if they want to attend a Jordanian University.

45% of the students fail the Tawjihi.

There are state and private preschools. Queen Noor was a big proponent of the Montessori Method and most follow the method to some degree. (Can you
see me smiling?)

Because of the war in Iraq, almost over night Jordan's population increased by 20%. Iraqi refugees are not educated in the Jordanian system although at this time this is under great debate. Pretty much the same arguments we hear in the states on educating illegal aliens can be applied to the education of Iraqi refugees. Besides not having the money to educate at least half a million people, there is worry that if they do, many will stay and put a continued strain on Jordan's very few resources.