Jordan Times
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Kingdom tops regional
education charts
By Mohammad Ghazal
AMMAN — Jordan ranked first among Arab countries
in the Education for All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report for 2005.
Overall, the Kingdom was 45th out of 121 nations surveyed.
The EFA Global Monitoring Report, which is developed by an independent team and
published by UNESCO, assesses progress in the commitment to provide basic
education to all children, youth and adults by 2015, according to UNESCO's
website.
Ayman Barakat, Ministry of Education spokesperson, told The Jordan Times
yesterday that the report for this year focused on four criteria — school
dropout level, illiteracy rate, qualitative leap in the educational process and
gender equality in education.
A Ministry of Labour survey of 327public schoolchildren last year identified
several factors alienating them from school.
Students cited issues of financial problems, the poor teaching quality and the
irrelevance of some subjects in their daily lives as factors discouraging them
from staying in school.
According to Barakat, the dropout rate in the Kingdom stands at 4 out of 1,000
students.
“With regard to the leap in the educational process, the ministry has introduced
new curricula in four grades, trained teachers on e-curricula and has
established new schools to reduce overcrowding at the schools which in return
reflected positively on the educational process among other achievements,” said
Barakat.
Of the 1.6 million students in the Kingdom's schools, Barakat said regarding
gender parity that “the number of boys might be 1 or 2 per cent more than the
girls,” pointing out that this figure is much better in the Kingdom than in many
other Arab and foreign countries.
Barakat attributes the country's low illiteracy rates to the 298 literacy
centres in the Kingdom.
The illiteracy rate plummeted from 67 per cent in 1961 to 9.1 per cent this
year.
The EFA Global Monitoring Report is the prime instrument to assess global
progress towards achieving the six `Dakar' EFA goals, to which more than 160
countries committed in 2000, according to the UNESCO website.
The report also identifies effective policy reforms and best practices, draws
attention to emerging challenges and seeks to promote international cooperation
in favour of education.