Gov't mulls new kindergarten strategy

AMMAN — A coordination meeting on Saturday discussed means to implement the national strategy and operational plan to accommodate all children at the kindergarten stage as of the 2020-2021 academic year. 

The meeting, headed by Education Minister Tayseer Nueimi, aimed at following up on the fourth executive package of the government’s economic programme to improve services presented to citizens, covering the educational, health and public transport sectors, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported. 

Nueimi also stressed the ministry's keenness to cooperate with all its partners to realise the national target to enrol all five-year-old children in KG2 as of next year, given its great benefits for children, families and the country as a whole. 

Under the plan, the ministry will appoint 800 female teachers and assistants from saturated specialisations to work in the KG2 stage, facilitate procedures for licensing early education institutions in the private sector and provide academic support through training teachers, he added.

He also noted that the ministry, as part of the educational waqf (Islamic endowment) project implemented in cooperation with the Ministry of Awqaf, has received a donation of JD250,000 that will be used to build a complex of six kindergarten classrooms in Tafileh, Petra reported. 

Awqaf Minister Muhammad Khalileh expressed the ministry's full support to the nationwide project, referring to the possibility of using Sharia schools and Islamic associations as venues for this project. 

Youth Minister Fares Breizat also noted the possibility of using youth centres across the country as kindergartens, adding that the ministry, in cooperation with UNICEF, will rehabilitate some centres to prepare them to receive children, and expressing the ministry's readiness to incur the operational costs. 

While announcing the fourth economic incentives package in late December, Prime Minister Omar Razzaz said that one of the greatest challenges in the education sector is kindergarten, adding that the government will cooperate with all the concerned agencies to provide kindergarten education throughout the Kingdom.