Building trust through Education: A case from Jordan

Recognizing the positive effects that can be reaped from school and community cooperation, educators in Jordan have explored options for improved student learning outcomes through better engagement between schools, teachers, and students.

In the case of Ira and Yarqa, two Jordan villages, the question was how to involve parents and citizens in the school planning process when many of them were unsure of how to do so, and possibly had no interest in participating. It was also unclear how to convince principals and schools to accept a shared decision-making process.

Improving engagement between schools, teachers, and students

The World Bank financed School and District Development Program supported this and related measures to change this. At the school level, principals had to reconceptualize their role as school leader from one that is solitary and autocratic to one that is inclusive, transparent, and consensus-based, essentially adopting a form of distributed leadership. “The principal is constantly in contact with the parents. He has all our numbers and he’s the center of contact as he is aware of all the school problems,” explained one parent.

However, realizing a common vision and commitment to the effective delivery of education requires in every country the forging of a sustained complementarity between informal and formal systems. To this end, the school requested to hear from parents on how to align its vision with that of the community.

Feedback from parents

Soliciting feedback from parents via a questionnaire as part of the input to the SIP was at first regarded by parents as a “test.” The result were low initial response rates, but over time (and with further encouragement from teachers, principals, and leaders), parents realized that such information provided a useful and rational basis on which difficult decisions could be made. “Now the engagement with the community is different: it’s regular, they are involved in decision making, they oversee and support the school,” observed Hasan, the teacher and former student at Zeid Bin Haritha School.

Community and school problems could range from how to utilize the school grounds to how to address a student’s learning disability or to identify the kind of services a parent can provide. By leveraging social and community relations, the schools in Ira and Yarqa solved local problems through transparent procedures that were accepted locally.

The government of the future will succeed to the extent it coherently and legitimately maps its policies onto prevailing local norms and governance mechanisms and, when necessary, incrementally curbs the undue influence of powerful local elites. Realizing that these types of reforms are a collective social task that, like any such task, requires persistence, learning, and a tolerance for occasional setbacks.

References

“Brixi, Hana; Lust, Ellen; Woolcock, Michael. 2015. Trust, Voice, and Incentives : Learning from Local Success Stories in Service Delivery in the Middle East and North Africa. Washington, DC: World Bank. [LINK]