Nonstate & Low-Cost Private Primary Schools in Jordan

As USAID directs efforts to support increasing self-reliance for their government partners, it recently included the private sector as potential partners, especially around efforts to guarantee universal basic education and meet global educational development goals. The regional MENA report on nonstate schooling suggested that opportunities for USAID to partner with the nonstate schooling sector were located with humanitarian and refugee schools, and—potentially—low-cost private schools. This study investigated the conditions of the latter.

“Nonstate” schools refers to schools owned, managed, or financed by a nonstate actor, and include public-private hybrid forms. A sub-category of nonstate schools are “private” schools, defined as wholly owned, financed, and operated by a nonstate actor; another nonstate option called "low-cost” schools—which in Jordan were most private schools—were those that charged between JOD 400 and 1,000 ($564 and $1,410 USD) in tuition annually in contrast with more “elite” schools that charge between JOD 8,000 and 20,000 ($5,641 and $28,209 USD) annually. The report found that the nonstate schooling sector was prominent in Jordan, with most nonstate schools operating as low cost and serving the middle class and the working poor.

The objective of this study was to provide USAID/Jordan and the Jordanian Ministry of Education with information about low-cost primary schooling in Jordan to better understand the nonstate schooling sector and to identify potential opportunities to partner with this sector to achieve national educational development goals.