Report Highlights The Many Aspects of the Education Reform

The Supreme Education Council will soon release a report entitled "Education for a New Era: Preparing Qatar for the Future" which tells the story of education reform in Qatar.

In 2003, the State of Qatar launched an ambitious initiative – Education for a New Era - to reform public education. In four short years, the reform has made rapid progress incorporating curriculum standards that meet international benchmarks, establishing autonomous schools that foster creativity and critical thinking, and developing evaluation tools that provide the ability to report and track school progress.

Education for a New Era has become widely known throughout Qatar. The SEC recognized that the time is right to document and tell the story of this ambitious groundbreaking reform. As interest in the reform grows, particularly among international audiences, there is a pressing need to ensure that the history of the reform is researched, documented, and most importantly, told from the Qatari perspective.

The paper is a frank discussion of how the education reform initiative began – the accomplishments thus far and the challenges it has faced – carefully mapping out how the government policy and reform process has been shaped by a clear vision of the future on the part of the Qatari leadership.

The report underscores the commitment of Qatar's leadership to build a world-class education system - a system that takes international best practices and weaves them into a framework that reflects and serves the particular needs of Qatari society and students. Education is critical to the nation achieving its longer term goals of becoming a more open, democratic society with a diversified, vibrant economy.

Education for a New Era represents an extremely ambitious, highly complex design for fundamentally changing Qatari schools. National leaders and local educators have had to confront a wide variety of challenges to implementing the plan—some anticipated and some not - forcing them to make strategic adjustments while remaining tenaciously dedicated to the fundamental principles of the reform.

This document contains five main sections that chronicle the history, accomplishments and challenges of the reform. These sections are:

• An overview of the history of the reform and its successes and challenges to date including information on each of the three Institutes – Education, Evaluation and Higher Education;
• An in-depth look at the Independent Schools, including short profiles of several schools that vividly illustrate what autonomous, innovative, child-centered schools look like in Qatar;
• A review of the development of comprehensive curriculum standards in Arabic, English, mathematics and science;
• A description of the evaluation component of the reform, detailing the new evaluation system – how it was developed and how it is being implemented; and
• A review of post-secondary education, including information on the scholarship programs and student advising for higher education.

"Successes to date have involved overcoming many obstacles and challenges. The real effect of Qatar's commitment to Education for a New Era is taking Qatar's students, teachers and schools closer to a world-class education system," the document concludes.

Having acknowledged its successes, the Qatari leadership also understands that Qatar still has a long distance to travel in its quest to be among the world's best. "In making this journey, the Supreme Education Council is very much aware of the need to continually re-visit Education for a New Era and determine if there are further changes and improvements that can be made," says the report.

The report details how Education for a New Era has incorporated best practices from those nations where students are among the world's best while at the same time tailoring them into a framework that reflects and serves the particular needs and values of Qatari society and students.

"Not only have the first few years of Education for a New Era thrown up many challenges and afforded Qatar with opportunities to develop and test new approaches to teaching and learning, it has provided some valuable lessons which are already being integrated in the reform development. The Supreme Education Council has put in place many of the essential elements of a modern, standards-driven school system, including curriculum standards that are among the best in the world."

The 100 odd-page document is arguably the most comprehensive overview and summary of the reform process. It goes back to the beginnings in 2001 when the RAND Corporation was invited to propose a plan to restructure the education system to achieve the steps leading up to the reform's launch in 2003. The document also explores how active learning has transformed the classroom environment and discusses how effectively today's independent schools are being managed.