Jordan

Administration: Jordan, like most Arab countries, has a centralized system of education. Thus, the MOE constitutes the final authority on all important matters, such as what is to be taught by whom and under what conditions. Accordingly, decisions on the distribution of resources, syllabi, textbooks, teacher appointments, and national examinations are made by the MOE or its affiliated agencies.

Administratively, there are four units that plan and implement the educational process. These units are:

• The Center: It is responsible for designing the educational policy and plans, as well as implementing and following up. The units in the Center include the secretary general, the general directors, specialized directors, and the office of the minister.
• The General Directorates of Education in the governorates: These directorates are headed by general-directors who supervise and implement the educational policy and plans at the governorate level. There are 12 general directorates.
• District Directorates of Education: There are 26 district directorates of education in the governorates, each with a director and assistants for technical and administrative affairs. Each district has a local education committee or, where such committees are not available, a municipal council, which assists the district office in carrying out such activities as building and expanding schools, appointing staff, allocating funds, and training. The district or regional directorates mainly carry out the policies of the MOE and the Central Education Committee attached to it.
• The school is considered the central unit of the educational process. It is administered by the principal and assisted by adequate staff to provide the necessary services.

Institutions other than the MOE participate in delivering educational services. These include the Ministry of Social Development and the Directorate of Education and Culture of the Armed Forces, which administer 19 schools. UNRWA is responsible for administering 198 schools for Palestinian refugees in which 143,893 students were enrolled in the academic year 1997-98.

Financing Education: Public education is financed mainly through the general budget of the government. For the 1997 fiscal year, education contributed 4.2 percent of the gross national product, and educational spending represented 12.5 percent of the total general budget of the government. This was up from 8.5 percent in 1990. Education in Jordan, however, is not financed by the government alone. UNRWA finances and administers basic education for Palestinian refugees.

Public universities are financed by government support from the general budget, customs and taxes imposed by the government, student fees, grants, and university benefit projects. Student fees in private universities are three to four times the fees of public universities.

Public universities evaluate their own performance through their boards of trustees, while private universities are evaluated for accreditation by specialized committees that pay repeated visits to the universities and report to the Ministry.

Private universities are owned by companies that are established under the Corporate Law and are either public shareholding companies or private shareholders. All these institutions are for profit entities.

While some financial support is available from the government for students attending university, the majority are supported by their families. Those students on government scholarships pursue a secondary school teaching career. Arabic, English, mathematics, and science are the prime areas of concentration for most of these students who are expected upon graduation to serve the country's schools.

Tuition and fees are the same in all of the public universities, while they vary in private universities. The main sources of financing for private universities are student fees; shareholders, either individuals or institutions interested in education; and donations from individuals or institutions in Jordan or abroad.

Educational Research: Educational research, still in its infancy in Jordan, is carried out by different agencies. Research is a function of the Research Section of the MOE's General Directorate of Educational Research and Studies. The tasks of this directorate are:

• Identifying the problems related to teaching-learning process.
• Selecting researchers to conduct studies, monitor their implementations, and prepare their budgets.
• Conducting research related to the improving the teaching-learning process.

The research budget at the MOE for the 1998 academic year was estimated at 26,000 Jordanian dinars and distributed as follows: research conducting; stationery and publications; and rewards of researchers, coordinators, and evaluators of educational research.

Other organizations concerned with educational research in Jordan are the National Center for Human Resource Development, the universities, and the Educational Research and Development Center of UNRWA.

The research fund in the budgets of universities is either very small (about 1 percent), too small to be useful, and in many cases not used at all. Limited project funding is available from such local sources as the cooperative research programs administered by the Higher Council of Science and Technology.