Parents, teachers in Jordan demand immediate action plan to bridge education gap

AMMAN — With the first school semester coming to a close, parents and teachers have called for preparing immediate action plans to prevent students from falling back academically.

During a Lower House session on Tuesday, Deputy Yanal Freihat called for the immediate halt of distance education and the preparation of a “clear” mechanism, regardless of the epidemiological situation, for the return of students to their schools and universities.

Freihat said that a plan should be implemented in order to compensate students for what he described as “the distancing from education”.

"Regardless of the silver-tongued statements we heard from certain officials, mothers are best placed to assess the online learning experience, because they are the ones who endured stress with their children,” Freihat said.

“Online education has impaired students communication skills, decreased their attention span and let them miss out on a lot of valuable information,” Salma Ali, a Jordanian mother of three, told The Jordan Times on Wednesday.

There were no teacher-parent meetings during the semester, according to Ali who said that at the start of the first semester they had an online meeting only with supervisory staff of the school.

According to Ali, there is nothing wrong in taking some classes online as a way to keep up with ongoing developments, but in-class education should continue to be the main education channel.

“Online learning has negatively affected our children,” Um Lamar, a mother of three students in a private school, told The Jordan Times over the phone on Wednesday.

Parents are unable to control their children’s screen time. Stress, vision problems, headaches and other health problems keep cropping up, due to the long hours of sitting in front of laptops and other devices, she said.

Noor Manaseer, a teacher at an educational institute, highlighted the issue of unequal access to technology and devices, which results in unfair learning opportunities.

“It is time that we start thinking about how school environments could be made safe during the pandemic, all the while taking utmost precautions and safety measures,” Manaseer said, adding that this unprecedented crisis has demonstrated the importance of investing in Jordan’s educational system.