EDUCATION & WORKFORCE READINESS
Early Grade Education Activity (ASAS)
Global education is at a crossroads. 250 million children and youth are out of school, and around 70 percent of 10-year-olds are unable to read and understand a simple text, a sharp increase since before the pandemic. Early grade education is critical to reverse these trends, as it sets the foundation for children’s lifelong learning, cognitive development, and future opportunities, making it a cornerstone of national prosperity.
Jordan has taken important steps in recent years to strengthen early grade education – which is referenced as a priority within its national economic modernization vision – including curriculum reform, teacher training, and the rollout of e-learning platforms. Education Reform for the Knowledge Economy programs (ERfKE I and II) and other ongoing education sector reforms have contributed to the country’s high primary school (grades 1-6) enrollment rate of 98-99%, positioning it in the upper-middle range of the MENA distribution for primary enrollment.
about asas
The Early Grade Education Activity (ASAS) program builds on these efforts by focusing on the quality and inclusiveness of early grade learning. Launched in August 2023 and running through July 2028, ASAS empowers stakeholders within Jordan’s Ministry of Education (MoE) and throughout the country to deliver inclusive and holistic early-grade education. ASAS (“foundation” in Arabic), an IREX-led program, funded by the U.S. Embassy in Amman, and supported by Development Gateway and other consortium partners, is strengthening pre- and in-service teacher education while improving Kindergarten to Grade 3 foundational literacy, numeracy, and socio-emotional skills across Jordan.
The program will facilitate improved access to timely, relevant, and high-quality data to inform strategic and meaningful education policies, practices, and reforms. This data is critical for EG education planning and will be used to evaluate core areas like school performance, student learning, teacher distribution, resource allocation, and training initiatives. Overall, the program will strengthen Jordan’s early education data ecosystem and improve outcomes for public school students and teachers across the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
The ASAS program is necessary for enhancing how education sector data is used and improving interoperability between data and digital tools. Having accurate and easier-to-use data empowers stakeholders to advance data-driven practices that meet the needs of students, parents, and teachers.
Stakeholders working in technical and coordination capacities within the MoE encounter frequent challenges relating to data access, quality, and scalability. Addressing these issues will ultimately improve stakeholder coordination, prevent duplication in effort and other redundancies, and facilitate data-supported decision-making across the whole of the education sector.
Within ASAS, DG is supporting the development of a comprehensive data-informed environment that gives universities, teachers, schools, and the government the data and data governance policies needed to improve student learning across the entire country.
For example,
- DG supports Jordanian university partners by developing data systems and dashboards that strengthen accreditation, institutional improvement, and support for student teachers.
- DG also works with IREX to integrate data on teachers’ professional development, career progression, classroom observation scores, and school performance into interoperable systems that can generate teacher and student “report cards.” These tools give decision-makers a clearer picture of where teaching is most and least effective and guide targeted and differentiated interventions.
- At the national level, DG supports IREX’s policy work by advising on data governance policies, with a focus on managing sensitive early grade data responsibly and securely.
Cutting across this data-informed environment is ongoing work to explore how ‘AI-ready’ the Jordanian early grades education system is, balancing AI’s powerful new ways to aggregate and analyze education data while addressing concerns about negative impacts on critical thinking, creativity, and equity.
In the initial stage of the ASAS program, DG worked closely with stakeholders in Amman, Jordan to conduct a data landscape assessment of the existing education data to establish a comprehensive roadmap of stakeholder needs and priorities.
Following this assessment, the ASAS program will:
- Launch a new early grades undergraduate program at three public universities that is aligned with international standards and in-service teacher training;
- Institutionalize EG data quality assurance processes and assessments;
- Review and rationalize diagnostic assessment tools to cover holistic childhood development;
- Analyze the cost-effectiveness of teacher professional development; and
- Strengthen data systems utilized by the MoE and learning capabilities.
In 2025, IREX and DG also partnered to develop an AI for Education Accelerator joint offering as part of the Asas Program. The Accelerator is designed to support education sector stakeholders to measure their AI readiness and test AI tools in secure environments to enable them to more confidently navigate complex and ever-changing markets.