Doha, Qatar: The Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MoEHE) implemented several initiatives to enhance the skills of students during the 2023-24 academic year, said a top official.
“We rolled out many programmes, initiatives and activities which contributed greatly to building the personality of students, enhancing their capabilities and self-confidence,” said Assistant Undersecretary for Educational Affairs at MoEHE Maha Al Ruwaili.
Speaking to Qatar TV recently, she said that the move aims at making students responsible citizens capable of making decisions.
“The initiatives include a financial awareness programme (Al Wai Al Mali), which aims to enable students to make sound financial decisions. We also implemented an initiative with Qatar Development Bank ‘I am a Pioneer’ (Ana Raid), which is a training programme for educating students about financial concepts,” said Al Ruwaili.
She said that the programme aims to empower and develop innovative entrepreneurs among government school students by providing the necessary training and supervision in supporting entrepreneurial ideas and spreading the culture of entrepreneurship among them.
“The Ministry in cooperation with Injaz Qatar – a non-profit organisation held “Mubadara” competition, which aims to have students establish investment projects with a specific financial plan,” said Al Ruwaili.
Mubadara is the culmination of a six-month-long programme where student teams are offered the opportunity to conceptualise, establish and run a real business, with the guidance of professionals from leading businesses across Qatar.
“We are also cooperating with the National Cyber Security Agency to raise students’ awareness of cybersecurity concepts,” said Al Ruwaili.
She stressed the expansion of teaching foreign languages in schools. “We are teaching the English language from KG to grade 12. The French language is being taught as optional. The focus is also on German and Japanese languages and the Chinese language has also been added,” said Al Ruwaili.
She added: “Our goal for the coming academic year is to find more balance between the amount of knowledge, academics, and skills so that the student’s reference is not only the book and the educational material he studies in class.” Rather, she said, the students build their abilities and skills in other programmes that support them to face society, future life, and external society.
“We are keen to update the study plans and curricula to find a better balance between knowledge and skill and to build students’ personalities and prepare them for the future, and also in line with the third National Development Strategy of Qatar,” said Al Ruwaili.
She said that the purpose of making changes in working hours in government schools is to reweight the English language subject adding that “an English language class has been added, a physical education class has been added, and a life skills class has been added.”
“We reassure our students that the graduation project of secondary school students will be an enjoyable experience for them to apply their skills and experiences, and everything they studied in the early stages, and culminate in this project,” said Al Ruwaili.
