DOHA: Lack of motivation among students is a major challenge facing education in Qatar and the Supreme Education Council (SEC) has developed several new initiatives in the new academic year to address this issue, the Minister of Education and Higher Education H E Dr Mohammed Abdul Wahed Ali Al Hammadi said yesterday.
In a speech delivered at the start of the new academic year, the minister said the SEC had taken a serious view of this issue “that has been raised through several complaints on various occasions.”
“Therefore, the SEC over the last months has developed different activities to motivate students and improve their achievements…. Students this year will notice a difference starting from school buses to the lessons and the laboratories. Through this new setting, they will be able to develop their knowledge and skills,” said the Minister.
He said the SEC is going to develop various competitions to develop scientific and artistic skills among students. This has been done in collaboration with some entities inside and outside Qatar to make students innovative in areas like robot, photography, environment, reading and mathematics. Excellent students will be able to participate in championships at the national, regional and international levels in such areas, added the minister.
Dr Al Hammadi said the academic year 2014-2015, which started yesterday, “will be full of leading initiatives, outstanding activities along with keenness to strike a balance between meaningful entertainment and useful education.”
He said the new academic year will bring many innovative solutions that “have been translated into 70 initiatives that will be implemented successively during the year.”
He said priority has been given to harnessing all available resources “to build the Qatari man as an educated man, committed to his religion, confident of his present and ambitious for a bright future in which he will contribute to the construction of his own modern state and to raise its name high in its rightful place among nations.”
The Minister pointed out that “optimism in this academic year did not come from a vacuum, but rather as an inevitable result of hundreds of thousands of hours of hard work by working groups of thousands of people who have spent the past year reviewing, studying, planning, comparing, drafting, revising and monitoring so that this come back to school would be a blessed return heralding success for everyone.”
He added that success depends on each individual in the system of education playing of his required role and performing the important task he is entrusted with.
Dr Al Hammadi said students are not the only ones who usually bear the results of success and failure because they are in the front and because they are at the centre of the educational process and purpose.
“Nurturing and educating the students is a huge responsibility that should be shouldered by everyone working at the SEC, every licence holder, academic supervisor, teacher and administrator and we should all be aware of this responsibility and work very seriously so that hope for success would remain in front of the eyes of our students throughout the year from the first day until the last day of testing, nine months from today,” he said. The Peninsula
