Minister of Education Announces 4 Main Axes for Education Development in Qatar

Source: QNA

HE Minister of Education and Higher Education Buthaina bint Ali Al Jabr Al Nuaimi announced four main axes for the development of the educational system in the State of Qatar over the next eight years, in implementation of Qatar Vision 2030. Her Excellency the Minister of Education also announced four initiatives for the new academic year 2022/2023, based on the four axes.

In her speech at the first educational meeting organized by the Ministry on Monday, HE the Minister of Education and Higher Education said that the first axis of this system is students who we aspire to be lifelong science students, armed with knowledge and characterized 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.

Her Excellency added that the second axis is the teachers who we aspire to represent role models that provide students with inspiration and motivation to develop themselves and strive to achieve excellence, through 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.

HE the Minister of Education and Higher Education continued, the third axis is 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.

Meanwhile, HE the Minister noted that 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, characterized by accuracy and transparency through unified standards and control mechanisms.

In the same context, HE the Minister of Education and Higher Education shed light the new initiatives, noting that the first initiative is "Good Start", which is a program 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, Her Excellency added, 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. Meanwhile, 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 in the Ministry, and with the participation of representatives from the field, including teachers, school principals and students; looking forward to the cooperation 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.

Her Excellency 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 twenty 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 QR 17.8 billion, representing 9% of the State's budget.

HE the Minister explained that this amount is invested in serving more than 350 thousand students, distributed to more than five hundred public and private schools, in addition to the higher education students, whether scholarships abroad, or in national higher education institutions, which are 34 institutions and universities offering 378 academic programs in various specialized educational tracks, in addition to more than 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 of Education and Higher Education said.

In her speech on the importance of the success of FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 - which takes place during the new academic year, HE Minister of Education and Higher Education Buthaina bint Ali Al Jabr Al Nuaimi said that they are gathered today as the world's biggest sports event, FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, is about to kick off in Qatar. The event that Qatar dreamed of for twelve years, during which Qatar turned into a mega workshop where infrastructural changes took place so that Qatar is ready to host its guests from all over the world during the tournament.

Her Excellency stressed that this tournament showed 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 the expatriates who participated in the accomplishment of these projects.

Her Excellency added that during the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Qatar will celebrate the 70th anniversary of the establishment of formal education in Qatar. The education that provided Qatar with competencies that formed Qatar's human and knowledge capital leading to its sustainable development all these years, and thanks to it Qatar has become a distinguished place in the economic, cultural, social, diplomatic, tourism, sports, humanitarian levels and even has become a key player in the international community.

She stressed that for all of this, education has always been a strategic choice for Qatar and will never deviate from it, as the wise leadership has set it in mind since the founding of Qatar.

The meeting included an interactive seminar that was presented by Acting Undersecretary for Higher Education Dr. Khalid Al Ali, Assistant Undersecretary for Educational Affairs Maha Al Ruwaili, Assistant Undersecretary for Special Education Affairs Omar Al Nama, Assistant Undersecretary for Evaluation Affairs Khalid Al Harqan, Acting Assistant Undersecretary for Shared Services Affairs Ali Al Buainain, where they all discussed Qatar's interest in education and the importance of investing in it.

They also reviewed the success of the last academic year's exams and the distinguished academic results achieved by the secondary stage students despite the challenges imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic as well as other educational issues.

They also stressed the need to prepare the students for modern specialties to meet the needs of the labor market. They reviewed the remarkable development in the quantity and quality of the higher education programs available in the country, and the diversity of programs and degrees that national universities and partners in the private sector provides to the students. They referred to the steady increase in enrollment in the higher education sector especially knowledge economy programs, the presence of highly developed educational buildings and edifices according to global and sustainable standards, and the huge and developed digital infrastructure that contributed to the continuation of education during the pandemic and overcoming its challenges and attention to young people and education as a special necessity. In addition to the completion of the recruitment process and filling vacancies with efficiency and high capacity for this academic year and the cooperation of the schools' administrative cadres. They also answered questions regarding training provided to teachers, students' quality of life, and the development of universities, schools, and teachers as they are critical elements in Qatar's educational system.

During the meeting, Principal of Hamza Bin Abdul Mottalib Preparatory School for Boys Nasser Al Nuaimi talked about the role of senior management in preparing teachers in general and new teachers in particular for the new academic year.

The meeting also featured a short video that shows the journey of education development was displayed, and the student Ahmed Al Obaidli from Abdul Rahman Bin Jassim Preparatory School talked and made a promise that his generation will complete the education process started by the first generations 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 programs, in a way that enhances past successes and achieves the desired progress in the future. 

Source: QNA