DOHA: Qatar’s first Spanish school is set to open doors here in September, as part of Qatar’s Outstanding Schools Initiative.
Based in West Bay, the school belongs to SEK International Schools and English will be its official language of instruction, with emphasis on developing students’ fluency in both Spanish and Arabic.
Established in 1982, SEK International schools offer education to more than 6,000 students of all nationalities, from ages 3 to 18, in their campuses of Madrid, Barcelona, Almeria, Pontevedra, Dublin and Les Alpes.
Doha’s school is due to gradually offer co-educational K-12 multilingual international education.
“In pre-candidacy status within the International Baccalaureate Organisation, it will offer an academically rigorous education where children are encouraged to become critical thinkers and lifelong learners through an international, inquiry-based programme,” SEK has said on its website, where a brochure on Qatar’s school is now available.
A delegation from the Supreme Education Council (SEC) visited Spain last week to discuss the final details of establishing the Spanish school here. The team included officials from different departments of the SEC.
They visited the head offices of SEK Spanish School to review the final details concerning the opening of a branch to operate from academic year 2013/2014.
Study in the SEK School in Qatar will be limited to the primary stage in its first year and starting from pre-kindergarten stage up to the sixth primary class, the SEC has informed. The school will start by enrolling 180 students and will gradually expand by adding more stages each year, with plans to enrol 460 students in academic year 2014-2015. This number of students will increase to be not less than 600 students by academic year 2016-2017.
A delegation from SEK will visit Doha, most likely next week. There are approximately 1,400 Spanish nationals here and thousands of Spanish speakers. The last report of the Cervantes Institute, a public institution created by Spain in 1991 to promote Spanish and spread the culture of Spanish speaking countries, concluded that Spanish is the second language in the world, with over 495 million speakers. The Peninsula
