Jubilee School gets taste of parliamentary practices

AMMAN — Inspired by parliamentary practices, students at the Jubilee School held their own student council elections through the framework of electoral lists on Wednesday.

In preparation for the event, the school hosted the General Director of the election monitoring programme RASED, Amer Bani Amer, a week before the elections.

“Exposing the students to a full-on democratic experience is the only way to prepare them for their future political role as voters,” the director was quoted as saying in a statement sent to The Jordan Times.

Affiliated with the King Hussein Foundation, the school is an independent, co-educational, non-governmental and non-profit, boarding secondary school, offering a four-year education programme to students with high academic ability from grades nine to 12.

“In such a school where distinguished leaders of the future are studying, this level of participation in decision-making and freedom of expression is monumental in its ability to raise these young minds,” said Khaled Kalaldeh, Chairman of the Board of Commissioners at the Independent Elections Commission (IEC), according to the statement.

In another preparatory lecture given before the elections, Kalaldeh shared his experience as a member of several medical and political committees with the students, who in turn enquired about past and present political climates in Jordan.

When the elections, monitored and organised by the IEC, took place on Wednesday, around 420 students voted, ultimately choosing seven representatives to form their student council, the statement said.

“I am very happy to see our students living a simulation of real-life political practices, as they are taking this experience very seriously. I think that this will be the gateway to effect social and political change at their hands in the future,” said Jubilee Principal Suha Jouaneh Shahin in a video sent to The Jordan Times on Wednesday.