Queen Rania meets with UNESCO director general

AMMAN — Her Majesty Queen Rania on Wednesday met with UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova to discuss how recent regional developments have affected the progress of education in Jordan and the Arab world.

The meeting, which was held at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, shed light on the state of education in Jordan and the impact of the Syrian refugee crisis on the sector. 

Both Her Majesty and Bokova agreed on the importance of investing in teacher training, according to a statement e-mailed to The Jordan Times from the Queen’s office.

They also talked about the post-2015 global development agenda and discussed the importance of more ambitious education targets going forward that would tackle the quality of education, skills and post-primary education.

The talks also covered online education and how it can help transform education in the Arab world. 

Her Majesty noted that earlier this year, the Queen Rania Foundation (QRF) launched Edraak, a massive open online course (MOOC) platform that will broadcast the best Arab professors to the region, offering original Arabic courses — developed by QRF — to further enrich education in the Arab world.

The MOOC platform, which was launched in partnership with the nonprofit online learning initiative edX, will also give Arab learners access to courses taught at top tier universities like Harvard, MIT, and UC Berkeley, all of which are translated into Arabic. 

All courses are delivered at no cost to the learner. 

After the meeting Queen Rania, accompanied by Bokova, toured different sections of UNESCO headquarters.