Transforming education: the power of ICT policies - Commonwealth ...

Policy Content
In 2003, the MoE produced a list of key policy shifts that were required for ongoing education development. These
policy shifts have been captured in the design and content of the government’s intended educational reform
program. These shifts include:
apple increasingly engaging various stakeholders in determining the direction, design and delivery of education in
Jordan as opposed to an approach that effectively limits public and private sector participation in education
direction-setting and policy level decision-making;
apple moving to an outcomes-based curriculum from an input-focused model of education;
apple adopting a learner-centred approach to curriculum and teaching from a teacher and textbook-centred approach;
apple implementing a core curriculum – the learning outcomes of which can be met through different approaches
with many different learning resources – and a supplemental curriculum to meet the various learning needs of
different individuals rather than a “one-size fi ts all” approach;
apple incorporating a lifelong learning approach to the provision of education rather than the closed terminal
approach that has traditionally guided educational programs;
apple implementing the role of teacher as the facilitator or guide for learning from a role of teacher as provider of
information;
apple recognizing the professional nature of teachers through an effective ranking and rewards system as compared
to a civil service view of human resource development;
apple investing in quality continuous professional development of education staff (teachers and leaders) rather than
accepting pre-service training as suffi cient to meet the needs of learners;
apple ensuring equity in the provision of early childhood education by establishing Kindergartens in economically
disadvantaged areas through government-fi nanced facilities and services rather than relying solely on the
private sector to provide early childhood education;
apple utilizing technology as an integral part of the education and learning process and as a tool to support/enhance
learning, thereby enabling the effective and rapid acquisition of knowledge and skills for the new knowledge
economy requirements;
apple enhancing the capacity of an independent educational monitoring and evaluation agency (National Centre
for Human Resources Development) to provide a neutral coordinated approach to national educational
research and policy analysis and development from a situation that provided limited feedback and advice to
the educational system;
apple focusing increasingly on cost-effi ciency measures within the educational system to acquire resources for
quality enhancement activities rather than depending on annual increments to the education budget as the
sole source of funds for educational improvements. These cost effi ciency measures include:
− increasing the student-teacher ratio from 22:1 to 25:1;
− decreasing the number of educational administrators resulting from re-organization through attrition or
retraining for assignments in schools and directorates;
− increasing the cost-effectiveness of decision-making through the wide-spread use of an integrated
educational decision-support system, including school mapping, and by devolving decision-making to
directorates and schools;
− increasing administrative cost-effectiveness by increasing the use of computers and technology;
− reforming the education law to enable the consolidation of smaller schools (i.e. the requirement for a
school for ten students) into schools of an appropriate size to effect economies of scale enabling qualityenhanced
learning environments; and
− utilizing the high-speed broadband learning network to provide increased access to learners at lower costs,
reducing maintenance and administrative costs of technology in education and extending the life cycle of
technology through re-use of older computers as thin-client terminals in schools.
They provided the guidance for the implementation framework discussed between 2004 and 2006 and resulted in the
initial policy framework for 2007-2011 and the more recent documentation for 2009-2013. The policy shifts related
to information technology that helped in the design of ERfKE I and longer-term policy statements are as follows:
106 | Transforming Education: The Power of ICT Policies