Amman - The Queen Rania Foundation for Education and Development (QRF) held a private session during the World Economic Forum (WEF) under the title “Solving for Impact in Education”. During the session, the Foundation presented its vision and strategic positioning of Jordan as the ideal setting to reinvent education, to suit the rapidly evolving demands of a 21st century workplace, as well as a shifting geopolitical landscape and a more mobile population – forced or otherwise. The Foundation also announced its plans to establish an Education Innovation fund as a dynamic funding vehicle that will support the piloting of innovations in education and assessing their impact on learning outcomes.
Jordan’s strategy to regain its competitiveness in the region and internationally depends on its human resources. To add to that challenge, the Middle East today is the world’s largest producer and host of forced migration, with the number of refugees and displaced people reaching almost 15 million. More than 13 million children (40% of the school age population) in the region are not receiving an education as a result of conflict. As such, reinventing school education in resource constrained settings through an impact focused approach to learning will allow the Foundation to create a model that can be shared across the region, and beyond.
Over the next 5 years, the Foundation will work to reach 150,000 learners, between 3 and 15 years of age, with teacher-targeted localized innovative solutions that improve learner’s socio-emotional skills, numeracy, and literacy; and the Education Innovation fund will be open to ideas from around the world, providing grants and piloting interventions in Jordanian public schools in coordination with the Ministry of Education.
With a commitment to share lessons learnt and establish best practice, the Foundation aims to make the results of these interventions accessible to educators worldwide – especially to those working within developing-world contexts and facing forced-migration challenges.
During the session which was attended by local, regional and international dignitaries, thought-leaders and organizations, the Queen Rania Foundation acknowledged the grant provided by Google.org to the Queen Rania Foundation towards the creation of an online learning platform for Arabic open educational resources (OERs) targeting K-12 students and their educators across the Middle East and North Africa region.
The Queen Rania Foundation, founded by Her Majesty in 2013, aims to be a leading regional resource and incubator for new and innovative ideas and initiatives in education. In the belief that education is the foundation of economic, political and social development, QRF is focused on influencing national policy and creating transformational change on the ground while always keeping QRF and its work globally relevant.