AMMAN – The Arab Organization for Quality Assurance in Education (AROQA) held a workshop under the patronage of HE Dr. Omar Razzaz and in the presence of the Chairman of AROQA HE Dr. Talal Abu-Ghazaleh, on “Quality Assurance, Accreditation and Ranking of School,”. The workshop was attended by school principals from a number of Arab countries and representatives of international organizations at Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Knowledge Forum.
Dr. Razzaz stated that the Ministry has started to develop educational policies to enhance quality assurance and its application on the ground. He added that the Ministry endeavors to establish effective partnerships with the private sector to support the development of high quality educational process. He said that we established a quality and auditing unit and issued standards for an effective school as well as to empower schools through a specialized program to identify its needs and future plans to reach high quality standards.
Dr. Razzaz expressed his appreciation to Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organization which opened its doors to support the Ministry in all dimensions to build foundations for quality assurance, accreditation, and ranking of shools. He also thanked the private schools association while pointing out that the ranking of private schools project would complete before the end of this year.
For his part, Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh noted that the education process and its quality needs to be improved. However, the motivations for change are enormous including the need for an internationally competitive education system to support youth across the Arab region whose majority of population are below the age of 25 years.
He said that change entails quality in education and motivates global educational partnerships to support the development of advanced educational curricula based on modern technologies and competitive learning environment.
Dr. Abu-Ghazaleh pointed out that the required change to achieve quality incorporates the development of the educational policies by legislating laws and regulations that support educational approaches that cope with modernity, cultural openness and enhance creativity, and support a shift from teaching to learning.
During the workshop, standards of quality assurance, academic accreditation and ranking of schools were presented. The standards mainly focused on both administrative and academic aspects as well as the infrastructure, the educational outcomes and activities, creative skills, and new teaching pedagogies.
The workshop was organized with an objective to set the general frame of quality assurance, accreditation and ranking of schools to evaluate performance and quality of education at the Kingdom’s level based on accurate measurements that are related to excellence, governance, goals, outcomes, teaching, resources, and infrastructure.
It’s worth mentioning that AROQA has launched School Academic Accreditation Standards which conform to international standards, and has devoted its resources and expertise to help school acquire academic accreditation by preparing academic and administrative cadre to implement these standards and procedures to take schools to advanced levels of educational services.
