Heating education

His Majesty’s call upon the government to introduce heating in public schools is a welcome initiative, for “education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”, as Nelson Mandela once said. 

And we need to change the world through properly educated generations.

I would like to add a few suggestions to this initiative that should become a comprehensive national effort.

Central heating in the schools is estimated to cost JD22 million, according to the minister of education. Meanwhile, Jordan is moving towards renewable energy and is in need of projects in this regard. So why not have a national project whereby a public-private partnership quickly devises a heating plan for all schools that are beyond a certain size (to be more feasible) and use solar or wind power to heat schools in winter and cool them in summer (the schools in the Jordan Valley suffer unbearable heat levels in summer).

Funding for the project can be from the GCC funds, so the funds can be quickly mobilised.

Such a project would lower our import of energy, spur the growth of the renewable energy industry, which is currently at a nascent stage, and create value added, knowledge-intensive jobs.

In parallel to this, we must move to agglomerate schools. Under the current legislative framework, any population that has 10 students or more gets a school. This is not feasible.

In order to comply with the law, the Ministry of Education is forced to rent buildings that are not only small but also inappropriate for schooling in terms of lighting, classroom size, etc.

In addition, the cost of having so many separate schools creates inefficiencies, such as having a school of one or two classrooms with a principal, secretary, janitor, guard, etc. Hence, in terms of efficiency, they are terrible and have no scale economies.

Plus, such schools are unable to have playgrounds, are high risk and enable no future expansion.

The situation is such that three villages asked that their three schools be merged into one, which is a step in the right direction.

The great gesture by His Majesty, which I believe he partially financed from his own funds, requires that we complement through well-studied and properly formulated plans and actions.

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