Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah met today with UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova in Paris to discuss how the recent regional developments have affected the progress of education in Jordan and the Arab world.
The meeting which was held at UNESCO’s headquarters, shed light on the state of education in Jordan and the impact of the Syrian refugee crisis on the sector. Both Her Majesty and Bokova agreed on the importance of investing in teacher training.
Queen Rania and Ms. Bokova also talked about the Post-2015 global development agenda and discussed the importance of more ambitious education targets going forward that would tackle quality of education, skills and post primary education.
The meeting also included talks about online education and how it can help transform education in the Arab world. Her Majesty noted that earlier this year, the Queen Rania Foundation (QRF) launched Edraak, a massive open online course (MOOC) platform which will broadcast the best Arab professors to the region, offering original Arabic courses - developed by QRF - to further enrich Arab education.
The platform, which was launched in partnership with the non-profit online learning initiative edX, will also give Arab learners access to courses taught at top tier universities like Harvard, MIT, and UC Berkeley, all of which are translated to Arabic. All courses are delivered at no cost to the learner.
After the meeting Queen Rania, accompanied by Ms. Bokova, toured different sections of UNESCO’s headquarters.
Source: Petra