Challenges

The Government of Jordan closed all schools in March 2020. When schools reopened in September 2021, nearly half of were still on rotation due to space restrictions necessitated by COVID-19. This meant that students attending these schools continued to lose in-person learning time.

During the school closures, education moved online through a newly created government portal, DARSAK, which provided students with televised lessons. However, many vulnerable students were unable to access the online portal due to lack of parental support, data, devices, or connectivity. Additionally, many teachers did not have the skills in blended pedagogy or resources to teach remotely.

Toward a Solution

To address this, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) partnered with the Ministry of Education (MOE) of Jordan to design Learning Bridges – a national blended learning programme that is paper-based, with additional resources online, and that engages parents and caregivers in their children’s learning. Learning Bridges was launched in September 2020 as a response to an immediate need to keep students engaged in education during school closures, in such a way that their knowledge could be applied in their daily lives.

By the end of the 2021/2022 academic year, Learning Bridges had reached over 600,000 students (57 per cent female) in Grades 4 to 10 in over 70 per cent of public schools. In the 2022/23 academic year, the continued use of Learning Bridges at home and in the classroom fulfils the MOE’s vision of blended learning as an ongoing component of the Jordanian education system and highlights the sustainability of the project. Learning Bridges activities are also available to download on the UNICEF Jordan Learning Bridges page in addition to the MOE’s DARSAK online learning platform. Every activity pack has its own QR code linking to an online resource with audio content and extra resources. Teachers also receive weekly guidance and an online resource to support teaching. Audio files are embedded to provide accessibility to children with visual impairments or children who have difficulty reading. UNICEF and MOE prepared an online training course to strengthen teachers’ pedagogical understanding of blended learning. Learning Bridges champions in each directorate support teachers to be flexible and innovate in their delivery of the curriculum. This includes promoting the use of Good Practice padlets – large noticeboards of children’s work for use by schools and supervisors which have had an average of 100,000 views a month.

The Learning Bridges programme is included in the Jordan Education During Emergency Plan – with budget committed – as a key strategy to support children’s learning recovery. The initiative continues to be used in schools as a blended learning resource for teachers to recover and accelerate children’s learning. Moreover, UNICEF, the Ministry of Youth and the Ministry of Digital Economy are piloting Learning Bridges Clubs in 20 community centres. These will create links between schools and the community, supporting students who lack devices, connectivity, or parental support. Building on the success of Learning Bridges in Jordan and the scale of potential learning loss globally, UNICEF Jordan has shared lessons learned and good practices from its experience. Learning Bridges was presented to Jordan’s Education Sector Working Group (ESWG) to create awareness of how different organizations working with children and youth can get engaged. UNICEF Jordan finalized a Learning Bridges Impact Study in early 2022, in English and Arabic, which has been shared widely within Jordan and with all countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Through online launches of the Impact Study, recommendations and lessons learned were shared with a wide variety of stakeholders, including government, donors, international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) within Jordan as well as other countries in MENA. Furthermore, UNICEF presented the Learning Bridges programme more broadly, regionally and globally. UNICEF was asked to present Learning Bridges in China, with a focus on learning recovery. A presentation was also provided through the Connected Learning Centre in London: In Conversation with Jordan and Padlet, which had a global audience.

Learning Bridges supports the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 (Quality Education) by supporting children to recover and accelerate lost learning, therefore contributing to increased retention of knowledge and skills. It is an innovative approach which links textbooks and technology, school and home, and subject knowledge with applied learning. Learning Bridges is also an approach that can be easily replicated by ministries of education in developing countries, should they wish to develop a cross curricula blended learning programme. It requires subject experts in the Ministry of Education to work together to create curriculum linked resources that can be utilized by teaching teams in schools.

The platform, Padlet, costs UNICEF less than a $100 a year to provide a resource that can be accessed by up to 1 million students. This is also available to any country wishing to use a similar platform to host blended materials.