Education minister takes part in Global Distance Learning Alliance meeting

AMMAN — The Education Ministry has sought to make every effort to ensure continuity of the educational process since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Education Minister Tayseer Nueimi said on Wednesday.

The ministry has given the utmost importance to train teachers on distance education tools and means as the teacher is the main contributor in the learning process, he said.

Speaking during the official government meeting of the Global Distance Learning Alliance (GOLA), held remotely, Nueimi said the pandemic has “greatly affected” the education sector in the world, but has “brought opportunities that have to be invested in, whether in terms of rethinking the essence of education, curriculum content and student evaluation mechanisms, or the teachers’ skills, school administration and educational sector’s governance”.

The meeting aimed to discuss building teachers’ capabilities and training on integrated and remote communication technology, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

In addition to Jordan, government officials from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Uganda, Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya participated in the event.

During the pandemic, Nueimi noted the ministry has established a platform to train teachers on various programmes, in cooperation with many partners, aimed to build their capabilities in the field of ICT, including distance learning tools, the educational technology programme, blended education, and the innovative Education Bridges Programme to help one million students make up and speed up the learning process.

The minister also indicated that the ministry established partnerships with the public and private sectors to invest in teachers’ capabilities by involving them in all stages of educational content preparation.

He added that the ministry is currently working on training educational supervisors and teachers for the first three grades on the curricula developed using the “Microsoft Teams” programme, in cooperation with the National Curriculum Centre.

Lauding the “exceptional” efforts and initiatives made by teachers, in light of difficult circumstances, he stressed that “the Jordanian teacher has always been an initiator in academic and humanitarian/personal communication with their students and families”, adding that individual initiatives have had a great impact on educational and societal levels.

To transfer and exchange knowledge, Nueimi presented “the Jordanian experience in distance learning” and teacher capacity-building in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.