Minister announces 4 main axes for education development in Qatar

HE the Minister of Education and Higher Education Buthaina bint Ali al-Jabr al-Nuaimi on Monday announced four main axes for the development of the educational system in Qatar over the next eight years, in implementation of Qatar National Vision 2030, the official Qatar News Agency reports.

HE the Minister also announced four initiatives for the new academic year (2022/2023), based on the four axes.The announcements came at the first educational forum organised by the Ministry of Education and Higher Education at its headquarters on Monday on the occasion of the start of the new academic year. HE Dr Ibrahim bin Saleh al-Nuaimi, Undersecretary at the MoEHE, also took part in the meeting alongside a number of senior ministry officials and 450 directors of government and private schools in the country.In her speech at the forum, HE the Minister said the first axis of this system involves students, "who we aspire to be lifelong science students, armed with knowledge and characterised by flexibility, passion, curiosity and creativity, by enhancing their achievements and ensuring their continuity, equipping them with the skills of the 21st century, instilling the values of the Qatari identity in them, and developing and enhancing them."She said the second axis involves teachers, "who we aspire to represent role models that provide students with inspiration and motivation to develop themselves and strive to achieve excellence, by targeting and attracting distinguished Qatari teachers and school leaders, training and developing them, as well as attracting international qualified people and providing them with various options for professional development, stemming from the belief in the leading role of the teacher in the educational process."Further, HE the Minister explained that the third axis involves schools, "which we aspire to make them beacons of science and safe, advanced, rich and attractive environments, through the development of early education services, raising enrollment rates, building a comprehensive educational experience aimed at improving the quality of school life of students, designing integrated and flexible pathways for general and technical education for people with disabilities, and providing support to each school according to its needs and requirements."HE al-Nuaimi said the fourth axis focuses on the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, "which we aspire to turn into a center that builds and develops innovations and capabilities, through the development of institutional capabilities, while ensuring the highest level of transparency and accountability; in addition to building partnerships with families, the public and private sectors, to achieve efficiency, equality, inclusiveness, growth and innovation in the educational system, and the establishment of a quality assurance framework, characterised by accuracy and transparency through unified standards and control mechanisms."In the same context, HE the Minister of Education and Higher Education shed light on the new initiatives for the 2022/2023 academic year, noting that the first initiative is 'Good Start', which is a programme to train and guide new teachers through an advanced experience in training and professional development. The initiative also includes the launch of a training package for teachers and school leaders, in cooperation with experience houses, and local and international partners to provide high-quality training for teachers and school administrators.The second initiative, she said, is 'My School is My Community', which is a multi-axis initiative focusing on all dimensions of the quality of student life and building an integrated personality. The third initiative is 'Towards Excellence', which will be implemented by designing different development paths for public schools, including performance improvement programs and procedures that correspond to the needs of each school separately. The fourth initiative is 'School Change Leaders', which aims to develop mechanisms to support and follow up the performance of schools, in accordance with the best practices of effective partnership between the ministry and the educational field, and to build human and institutional capacities to support positive transformation efforts in schools.HE the Minister of Education and Higher Education reiterated that these initiatives were designed under the leadership of experts and specialists at the ministry, and with the participation of representatives from the field, including teachers, school principals and students; looking forward to the co-operation and active participation of all parties in order to make these programs successful, eventually developing the performance of the educational system in Qatar, and achieve many accomplishments in the new academic year.She congratulated everyone on the start of the new academic year, after the necessary preparations have been completed, noting that the national education system, over the past 20 years, has gone through many changes that have added to it and enriched its experience, and this would not have been without the generous support of the State for the education sector, which this year received nearly QR17.8bn, representing 9% of the State's budget.HE the Minister explained that this amount is invested in serving more than 350,000 students, distributed in over 500 public and private schools, in addition to higher education students, whether through scholarships abroad, or in national higher education institutions. These are 34 institutions and universities offering 378 academic programmes in various specialised educational tracks, in addition to some 33 research and scientific institutions, whose fields are diverse to include the environment, energy, medicine, entrepreneurship, computing, social, humanitarian and educational studies, technological innovations and sustainable development. These fields serve the knowledge-based economy, and the State's development directions in the present and future."Today, we have reached an advanced educational system, but we will not stop at this limit of development, we are looking forward to further achievement, excellence and quality, so that our outputs will be qualitative and achieve competitiveness. Countries are built with the help of their educated sons who are able to compete regionally and internationally, and that is why we are constantly striving to develop our educational system, through continuous evaluation and objective diagnostics, based on reality and its indicators, to support the strengths of our educational system, and improve aspects that need to be developed," HE the Minister said. Regarding the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, HE the Minister stressed that the event shows that the Qatari individual is capable of leading, achieving and accomplishing mega projects, which was hailed by the world. In this context, she hailed the prominent role of expatriates who have participated in the accomplishment of these projects.She added that during the World Cup, Qatar will celebrate the 70th anniversary of the establishment of formal education in Qatar. This education has provided Qatar with competencies that have formed the country's human and knowledge capital leading to its sustainable development all these years, enabling Qatar to occupy a distinguished place at the economic, cultural, social, diplomatic, tourism, sports, humanitarian levels and become a key player in the international community.The meeting featured a short video that showed the journey of educational development in Qatar, and student Ahmed al-Obaidli from Abdul Rahman Bin Jassim Preparatory School pledged that his generation will complete the education process started by the first generation and affirmed that they would preserve the legacy of the country and ancestors.The meeting aimed to shed light on the most important aspirations and ambitions of the education system, review its qualitative initiatives, determine its future direction, and introduce its development plans and programmes, in a way that enhances past successes and achieves the desired progress in the future. The meeting also included an interactive forum with the participation of assistant undersecretaries of the ministry for different sectors, which addressed key issues of interest and answered the queries of participants.