Queen Rania Reviews Progress of QRTA’s Preparations to Launch Diploma Program for New Teachers

(Office of Her Majesty – Press Department – Amman)  Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah received a briefing on preparations currently under way to launch the Queen Rania Teachers Academy’s (QRTA) Initial Teacher Education professional diploma on Sunday, which is designed to prepare and empower pre-service teachers in Jordan before they begin their careers as educators.

The program is being developed in partnership with University College London Institute of Education (IOE), the Ministry of Education, and Jordan University.

IOE is one of the world’s leading centers for teaching and research in the social sciences, and has ranked first in the World for Education Research for the last two years.

Queen Rania dropped by a training workshop for tutors, who will be teaching the diploma program. The workshop is conducted by lecturers from IOE for a group of twelve instructors, who were carefully vetted and selected from a pool of 2,000 applicants.

Her Majesty thanked the lecturers and tutors for their commitment and said she was delighted to see how high the standards have been set to revolutionize teaching as a profession in Jordan. “We are setting this new standard and you are going to be the custodians of these new standards and the initiators and leaders for this initiative,” Queen Rania said.

The Queen also met with QRTA CEO Mr. Haif Bannayan, and Project Lead and Lecturer in Education at IOE, University College London (UCL) Ms. Kim Insley, who briefed Her Majesty about how IOE is structuring the teacher induction and preparation program.

Mr. Bannayan said the program lasts for ten months and will be offered to those who wish to become teachers after concluding their bachelor’s degrees. He added that the first 240 student teachers will begin the program in September, which will eventually be expanded to accommodate up to 3,000.

At the end of the program, teachers are awarded a postgraduate professional diploma marking their readiness to begin their teaching careers. QRTA’s Initial Teacher Education program aims to produce knowledgeable and skilled teaching professionals, who can contribute to the overall quality of student learning and achievement by involving public and private schools in the program’s rigorous practical training and hands-on component.

The program will train future teachers on education theories, leadership and classroom management skills, as well as teaching mathematics, science, English and Arabic languages, social sciences, and arts.

The program will eventually have a permanent base the Jordan University campus.

Enrolled teachers will attend lectures, seminars and tutorials, where a range of multimedia technologies are employed. Teacher students are also expected to conduct their own research and read plenty of scholarly articles.

Her Majesty Queen Rania has called for for instituting pre-service training as an integral part of education reform in Jordan. Initial teacher training is essential in equipping university graduates with necessary skills to enter the teaching profession, and keep up with fast-developing education trends and labour market expectations. QRTA already offers training for in-service teachers, and has reached over 30,000 teachers with its various programs since its founding.