Ministry and school officials at the ceremony.
DOHA: To encourage private sector’s participation in country’s economic development projects, the Ministry of Education and Higher Education yesterday signed six contracts for the leasing and allocation of government-owned land plots with schools and companies which had won the bids offered by the technical group of the Ministerial Group.
The contracts were signed by Director of the Department of Common Services of the Ministry Mohammed Malfi Al Hajri and representatives of schools and companies winning bids.
“Private education is a key partner in the education system in Qatar and is the focus of good leadership, pointing to the presence of 281 private schools and kindergartens in different stages, teaching more than 25 curricula,” Al Hajri said.
“Private education accommodates more than 190,644 students and more than 11,269 teachers from different nationalities,” he added.
The signing ceremony, organised at the InterContinental Doha - The City Hotel, was attended by senior officials of the Ministry of Education and Higher Education and members of the technical group of the Ministerial Group.
Advisor to the Minister of Education and Higher Education for Private Schools Affairs Tarek Abdullah Al Abdullah, who is also a member of the technical committee for encouraging the participation of the private sector in economic development projects, said that the six schools to be established under these contracts cover all grades from KG to 12th, five of which follow the British curriculum while one follows the Indian curriculum.
“These schools provide opportunities and various options for parents and their children, and expected that the schools together will provide more than 8,000 seats, which meets the growing demand for education in the light of the growing population in Qatar,” Al Abdullah said in a press statement.
He pointed out that they took into consideration the population density when allocating and distributing schools in various regions of the country to achieve the balance of development, noting that the duration of the implementation of construction projects to run private schools and provide educational services will be within two years from the date of signing these contracts.
To meet the growing demand for school admissions, Hamad Al Ghali, Director of the Department of Private Schools Licensing at the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, told The Peninsula recently that 13 new private schools including two Indian community schools are set to be opened in the academic year 2018/2019 having a total capacity of 6,021 seats.
