Queen Rania: "The Process of Innovation and Education Never Ends"

(Office of Her Majesty – Press Department – Amman) - Her Majesty Queen Rania Al-Abdullah attended the Jordan Education Initiative (JEI) Executive Board meeting, Tuesday, where board members made a series of recommendations to strengthen the three-year-old initiative. At the meeting, Queen Rania reiterated that education is on the top of Jordan's national agenda. Her Majesty further highlighted the country’s support for the Jordan Education Initiative, and the need for a clear vision, leadership and strategy to build on its success and spread best practices across the Kingdom.

The board discussed the successful achievements of JEI thus far, including 100 connected discovery schools, the creation of five different e-curricula and strides in teacher training. Her Majesty stressed that the "process of innovation and education never ends," and the board made several recommendations to step up teacher training, improve the technology infrastructure, and invest in capacity building and e-curricula.  Board members and the various stakeholders present agreed on the importance of continuous monitoring and evaluation, stakeholder commitment going forward and a clear working strategy outlines the roles of the various stakeholders from both the private and public sectors.

The board also pledged to continuously review the e-curricula and integrate it into JEI discovery schools. Commitments were made from private sector corporations to JEI. CISCO Systems committed to work on the terms of reference between JEI, the government and the different partners, and Microsoft committed to plan for change management.  Attendees included Minister of Education, Khaled Touqan; Minster of Information and Communications Technology, Omar Al Kurdi; Secretary General of the Ministry of Education, Tayseer Nahar; Secretary General of the ICT ministry, Haif Babayan; Director of the King Abdullah Fund, Tarek Awad; as well as representatives of CISCO Systems, USAID, Fastlink, Microsoft, Computer Associates, the Development Coordination Unit; and World Economic Forum. 

The Jordan Education Initiative was launched in June 2003 by the World Economic Forum's IT and Telecom Industry Governors to transform public education through technology in Jordan. JEI incorporates over 17 global corporations, 17 Jordanian entities, and 11 governmental and non-governmental organizations, as stakeholders in achieving its objectives. Recently the JEI model has been adopted in Palestine, Rajasthan and Egypt. In her address at the World Economic Forum in Davos, earlier this year, Queen Rania said that Jordan looks forward to learning their "ideas for adaptations and improvements" and "importing [their] innovations…so that it is a truly global educational initiative".