Minister of Education and Higher Education H E Buthaina bint Ali Al Jabr Al Nuaimi during the national consultative meeting for Qatar in preparation for the Education Transformation Summit.
Doha: Minister of Education and Higher Education H E Buthaina bint Ali Al Jabr Al Nuaimi has emphasised on moving towards reviewing plans and policies to discuss ways of transforming education.
“Despite the progress made by Qatar in basic and higher education, and the recent reforms and commitments it made to improve learning processes and outcomes, we must now, in light of the recent challenges that education faced in Qatar and the rest of the world, move towards reviewing our plans and policies to discuss ways of transforming education in order to achieve the goals of the 4th goal of sustainable development and the comprehensiveness and quality of education,” she said.
This came in a speech delivered by the Minister at the opening of the national consultative meeting for the State of Qatar in preparation for the Education Transformation Summit, which was organised by Qatar National Commission for Education, Culture and Science and Education Above All Foundation, over two days, in partnership with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef).
A pre-summit conference to prepare for it is scheduled to be held in the French capital, Paris, on June 29-30.
The Minister reviewed the task of the consultative meeting to identify priority areas to achieve the transformation in education, including transformational measures to enrol all children in schools, ensure their acquisition of reading, writing and arithmetic skills, and appropriate psychological and social skills, and pay attention to the needs of the most marginalised groups, including children with disabilities and discussing how to enhance the capabilities of teachers, and providing them with the necessary tools and capabilities to enable them to teach according to the highest quality standards, whether in Arabic or any of the many other languages used in teaching in the State of Qatar.
Minister Al Nuaimi noted that the objectives of the consultative meeting include supporting the achievement of the goal of the Education Transformation Summit, which aims to develop a common vision, achieve international commitment, harmonise the measures to be taken at all levels to transform education from now until 2030, and identify and document the experiences of Qatar in a comprehensive way with regard to the great achievements, the mission, good practices, and important drivers of education transformation, and building on them for a better future.
She said that the national consultative meeting brings together more than 50 stakeholders under one roof, to discuss the urgent measures needed “to recover and transform our education system in ways that restore hope to an entire generation of children and youth whose future may be challenged, especially in the context of the Coronavirus pandemic.
Moreover, the Minister explained that to this end, and in preparation for the preparatory meeting in Paris, and for the Education Transformation Summit itself, the State of Qatar held a regional consultative meeting with ministers of education, and with development partners, including representatives of Unesco and Unicef, and representatives from West Asia last May, to help identify the perspectives of countries and partners in the region, in particular on three central and fundamental questions in education transformation.
