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Ammon News - Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah Tuesday visited the Queen Rania Teacher Academy (QRTA) in the King Hussein Business Park to congratulate its staff after one of its training programmes received the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) accreditation.

Last week, the QRTA announced its in-service Teacher Education Professional Diploma (TEPD), which offers online and in-person training to teachers, had been accredited by the CAEP, the largest accreditation council of its kind in the US, making the academy the first educational organization to have received the international academic accreditation in Jordan and the third in the Middle East.

In a meeting with QRTA’s CEO Dr Osama Obeidat and members of the academy’s management, Her Majesty stated the CAEP accreditation is a testament to the competency of the academy and the caliber of its in-service TEPD programmes.

"This achievement didn’t happen overnight. It comes after a ten-year journey of hard work and constant evolution," the Queen said, adding that the QRTA must continue to assess its programmes to monitor their impact on teachers and students.

The TEPD was launched in 2016 by the QRTA as a pre-service diploma in cooperation with University College London and the Ministry of Education. In May 2021, the QRTA handed over the pre-service diploma to the University of Jordan and three other public universities, making the first-of-its-kind diploma available to prospective teachers across the country.

The QRTA has since moved out of University of Jordan campus and developed an in-service version of the TEPD, which it now offers to teachers in Jordan and the region.

In the meeting, Obeidat explained the CAEP accreditation process took two years to complete, and it included the submission of a comprehensive roadmap, rigorous documentation, several interviews and a site visit.

The QRTA’s in-service TEPD was granted full accreditation for the coming seven years, which is the maximum accreditation period granted by the council.

Her Majesty was briefed on the QRTA’s current work, including its introduction of an online and blended teacher-training model in light of the pandemic. The team explained their efforts to share their experience in pre-service teacher training with public universities, contributing to the successful scaling of the pre-service TEPD programmes.

The meeting also included a summary of the QRTA’s recent contributions to the local and regional education industry, such as the academy’s series of free live webinars hosted by Jordanian and Arab educational experts, totaling 72 sessions and netting 789,000 views to date.

In September, the QRTA launched a number of open-source online courses, attracting 6,105 registered users from Jordan and across the region for courses on topics including managing an online classroom, behavior management and innovation in education.

Established in 2009, the QRTA is a non-profit organization aimed at empowering educators with the skills to nurture and lead future generations. It has extended thousands of professional development opportunities to public school teachers and leaders.

It continues to offer many training programs to educators. The QRTA also hosts the annual Teacher Skills Forum, with this year’s online version drawing the viewership of nearly 7,000 educators from 50 countries worldwide.