Queen Rania inaugurates four pilot KG classrooms in public schools
Queen Rania inaugurates four pilot KG classrooms in public schools
Amman, May 11 (Petra) -- Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah, on
Wednesday, inaugurated four pilot public kindergarten classes in
underprivileged areas, which will be applied in other governorates
of the Kingdom with the goal of improving access, quality and
relevance of education for children and youth.
The inauguration ceremony was held at Manshiet Hisban
Comprehensive School in Na'ur, as part of Jordan's education reform
program, under the Education Reform for the Knowledge Economy
(ERfKE) initiative, which was launched in July 2003, and aims at
re-orienting policy education, restructuring education programs and
practices, improving physical learning environments, and providing
improved and more accessible Early Childhood Education (ECE).
Minister of Education Dr. Khaled Touqan highlighted the
ministry's cooperation with USAID, the chief supporter of the
five-year program, through its ERfKE Education Reform Support
Project (ESP) which will enable the ministry to carry out the
project in 100 public KG classrooms and 20 child resource centers
Kingdom-wide.
US charge d'Affairs Mr. David Hale, National Council for Family
Affairs Secretary General Dr. Ruweida Ma'ayta, USAID Director Anne
Aarnes and school officials attended the ceremony.
Two KG students invited Queen Rania to their classroom, where Dr.
Tagreed Abu Taleb from ERfKE Support Project (ESP) briefed attendees
on the KG project.
Queen Rania also dropped in at the handicraft exhibition
organized by the secondary students of the Hisban School, before
concluding her visit to the area by dropping in on families in
Manshiet Hisban and checking on services provided to them.
Along with the Manshiet Hisban School, the Almanieh School,
Um-AlUsud School, and Um-Abhara School KG classes were also
launched concurrently before the program is applied in other
governorates of the Kingdom.
The KG project entails furnishing KG classrooms and playground
areas, as well as equipping them with modern learning and play
materials. Training of ECE teachers-a total of 258, in using the
first national ECE curriculum.
Upon its completion, in July 2008, the project's beneficiaries
will include: 10, 600 kindergarten children, 1,000 ECE
professionals, 65,000 students aged 16-18, studying in the MIS
program, and 2, 000 youth participating in the grade 9-11 pilot
School-to-Career transition program.
With the aim of improving the access, relevance and quality of
education for children and youth, ESP is providing support to the
Ministry of Education's Reform Program through two major components,
within which the four public KG were renovated: Improve and Expand
ECE and Youth, Technology and Careers (YTC).
The first component entails improving the physical appearance and
readiness of ECE facilities, modernizing and updating the ECE
curriculum, and strengthening the skills of ECE professionals. The
second component, however, deals with enhancing the curriculum for
the new Management and Information Stream (MIS) in grades 11 and 12
to better prepare youth for the workforce as well as integrating the
use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) into
teaching and learning in the MIS program, amongst other issues.
At the beginning of the current scholastic year, Queen Rania
launched the National Kindergarten Curriculum, which was formulated
stemming from the necessity to address the needs and characteristics
in the development and education of children during their crucial
formative ages of early childhood.
In 1994, pre-school education was made part of primary schooling,
but was not made compulsory. By the end of 2005, the Ministry of
Education hopes to increase the number of children enrolled in
kindergartens from 28.5 per cent to 35 per cent, by an expansion of
public pre-schools in remote areas.
//Petra//