Ammon News - By Gioia Forster/ Jordan Times

AMMAN — Many Jordanians who have the financial means and international outlook said they send their children to private American schools in preparation for US universities.

“I wanted a US education for [my children], an education that would carry over well when they go to college in the States,” Abdullah Zalatimo, owner and general manager of Zalatimo Sweets Co., told The Jordan Times recently.

Zalatimo, whose two children joined the American Community School (ACS) in ninth grade from the Amman Baccalaureate School, was born and raised in the US but attended the ACS and returned to Jordan in 1986 to run the family business.

“It was a good move to come to this school and get [my children] into the high school diploma system, away from the International Baccalaureate (IB) system — when my son went to college, it was like he had graduated from any school in the US,” he noted.

At the ACS, around 25 per cent of the around 750 students are Jordanians, and 40 per cent are Americans, with the remainder hailing from 45 different countries, Larry McIlvain, the superintendent of the school, told The Jordan Times in a recent interview.

“Many of our students go to university in the US, Canada and the United Kingdom, or to British, Canadian or American universities that have been set up in the Gulf,” he said. “What we constantly get back from our community is that the kids leave here with great 21st-century skills of problem solving, collaboration and working together in teams; skills they need to survive in the workforce,” McIlvain said.

Sixteen-year-old ACS student Mehraan Keval, who hopes to enrol at Stanford University after graduating in 2014, noted that “the school prepares you well for university in the States — they offer Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) preparation classes, Advanced Placement (AP) classes and all the academics are very rigorous”.

Abdul Majeed Shoman Jr, an ACS alumni, said his schooldays prepared him well for American culture.

“My parents knew I would go to college in the US, and they wanted me to get accustomed to the culture and language… so when I went to Northeastern University in Boston I didn’t experience any kind of culture shock,” the 30-year-old Jordanian said on the sidelines of a groundbreaking ceremony to launch a $6-million ACS expansion last month.

“The world of education has changed, and we wanted facilities that would help us meet the needs of the kids for what they’re going through,” McIlvain explained.

Zalatimo, who is a member of the ACS board of trustees, said the new facilities are going “to improve the quality of educational experience at the school”.

At the ceremony, US Ambassador Stuart E. Jones highlighted the importance of American schools in Jordan in strengthening US-Jordanian relations.

“We believe by bringing American-style education to Amman, we can advance the principles of critical thinking […] and the values of American education,” he said.

Several family members of Jordanian students at the ACS studied in the US themselves and wanted a similar education for their children. “My grandfather studied in the US a long time ago and he is a big advocate of US education,” Shoman said.

Others, such as Majid Alsadi, whose four children received most of their education at the ACS in Amman, wanted a diverse and international school for them.

“We were looking for a school that had an international dimension to its education,” the Iraqi businessman and lecturer at the University of Coventry in the UK told The Jordan Times.

The students themselves said they enjoy the sense of community that the school offers.

“I love the community feeling that is associated with the school; it has grown so much from when I first came, but I feel comfortable and have no problem talking to all the teachers and parents,” Keval said.