Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Education For All

Country Report

2000 - 2015

Supreme Education Council

Doha – July 2014
Supreme Education Council
 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

HH Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad al-Thani

Emir of the State of Qatar
Supreme Education Council
 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani

Prime Minister
Supreme Education Council
 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Map of Qatar
Cities and towns of Qatar
Supreme Education Council
 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Contents

01 Preface 1
02 Introduction 5
03 Executive Summary 8
04 Part I 13
Social, Economic and Educational Context 14
05 First: the social and economic context: 14
06 Second: Educational context 16
07 Part II 29
Education For All Goals 29
Part II 31
08 First Goal: early childhood care and education 31
09 Goal 2: Achieve Universal Basic Primary Education 41
10 Goal 3: Life skills and lifelong learning 59
11 Goal 4: Literacy and adult education 74
12 Goal 5: Gender Equality in Literacy 89
13 Part III 97
Education Quality 97
Part III 99
14 Goal 6: Education Quality 99
15 Part IV 143
Implementing EFA strategies 145
16 Part V 163
Relevance of EFA framework 164
17 Part VI 167
Post 2015 Horizon 168
18 References 177
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List of tables

No. Table page

1 Development of population in Qatar
2 Education levels of general public education
3 Students and schools in the private sector by stage
4 Students and schools in the public sector
5 Illiteracy rates in Qatar
6 Parallel education levels
7 Government spending on education
8 Cost per student
9 GER in Kindergarten
10 Percentage of new entrants to the first primary of students previously enrolled in kindergartens by gender and equality
index from 2000/2001
11 Number and percentage of academically qualified teachers in kindergarten
12 NER and GER distribution in the first primary
13 NER and GER distribution in the primary stage (1-6) 45
14 Distribution of registered students in the primary stage by gender and education type for 2000/2001-2012/2013 47
15 Number of repeaters and percentage of repetitions in the primary stage by gender, education type and academic year 48
16 Success rate in the Grade 6 (Primary Stage) 49
17 Retention rate until Grade 5 by gender 50
18 Promotion rates in public and private education from primary to preparatory to secondary stages 51
19 Number and percentage of academically qualified teachers of the primary stage 53
20 PTR in primary education by type of education 55
21 Youth literacy rate (15-24) 61
22 NER in the Secondary stage 62
 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

23 GER in the secondary stage by gender and GEI 63

24 Distribution of Secondary education students in general and specialized education 64
25 Education achievement percentages of the youth (male - female) 65
26 Total enrolment and GER and NER in TVET 66
27 Cost per student in TVET 67
28 Adult literacy rate (15 years and above) 77
29 Youth literacy rate (15-24 years) 79
30 Illiteracy rates for the age group 15 and above by gender 80
31 Number of teachers in adult education and literacy schools by gender and stage 81
32 Number of learners’ adult education and literacy program by gender, stage and level 82
33 Adult education and literacy sections by gender, stage and level 83
34 Number of adult education and literacy schools by gender and stage 84
35 Percentage of females in gross enrollment by educational level 91
36 Percentage of female teachers by educational level 92
37 Percentage of female directors in each level of public education 94
38 Equal educational opportunities by educational level 95
39 Number and percentage of teachers in kindergarten by qualification and gender 101
40 Number and percentage of primary school teachers by educational qualification and gender 102
41 Number and percentage of preparatory school teachers by educational qualification and gender 103
42 Number and percentage of secondary school teachers by educational qualification and gender 104
43 Pupil teacher ratio in all educational levels 105
44 PCR by educational level 107
45 TPR by educational level 108
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46 Percentage of spending on textbooks and educational materials of public expenditures 108

47 Percentage of teachers’ salaries of public expenditures on education 109
48 Average school life expectancy in the State of Qatar 110
49 Number of training programs and trainees 121
50 Number and percentage of teachers with professional licensing by license level 122
51 Number of schools evaluated periodically 124
52 National school accreditation categories 125
53 Results of Arabic Language students in Grade 4 and Grade 8 131
54 Results of students in Grade 4 and Grade 8 in English 132
55 Results of Grade 4 and Grade 8 students in mathematics 134
56 Results of Grade 4 and Grade 8 students in science 135
57 Success rate in Grade 12 subjects 137
58 Results of Qatar in PISA 138
59 Results of Qatar in TIMSS 139
60 Results of Qatar’s students in the two PIRLS sessions 141
 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

List of Figures

No. Figure page

1 Education Spending 26
2 GER in Kindergartens 33
3 Number of Kindergartens by Type of Education (Public-Private) 34
4 Percentage of kindergarten teachers with university qualification or higher 38
5 GER and NER in Grade 1 (Primary Stage) 44
6 GER and NER in primary education 46
7 Distribution of students of the primary stage by gender 47
8 Retention rate until primary Grade 5 by gender 50
9 Promotion rate from the primary to the preparatory stages and from the preparatory to the secondary stages, by type of education 52
10 Number of qualified teachers by stage 54
11 Youth literacy by gender 62
12 GER & NER in TVET 66
13 Adult literacy rates (15 years+) 78
14 Illiteracy rates (15 years and above) by gender 80
15 Number of adult education and literacy schools by gender and stage 98
16 Percentage of female teachers by educational level 93
17 PTR by educational level 106
18 Number of teachers and leaders with professional licenses by license level 123
19 Average standard Arabic examination scores for Grade 4 and Grade 8 students 132
20 Average standard English examination scores for Grade 4 and Grade 8 students 133
21 Average standard mathematics examination scores for Grade 4 and Grade 8 students 135
22 Average standard science examination scores for Grade 4 and Grade 8 students 136
23 Qatar results in PISA 139
24 Results of Qatar’s students in TIMSS 140
25 Qatar results in PIRLS 141
Supreme Education Council
 1 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Preface

Under its wise leadership, the State of Qatar has long understood the
importance of investing in the human being, as the main and essential element
in preparing and rehabilitating the human capital that will lead the nation
towards progress, development and knowledge.

Man is at the heart of sustainable development, at the same time, man is

the engine of sustainable development. Countries worldwide have focused on
children education; their main concern was to provide an education that covers all sectors and classes
without any discrimination based on sex, religion, race, language or country.

Qatar has paid special attention to education as enshrined in its constitution and translated in its
Vision 2030 and the strategic plan for the different sectors. Accordingly, stemming from its firm belief
in education for all ages and in the principle of equal opportunities, the Supreme Education Council
(SEC) – through the National EFA Plan, and the Education and Training Sector Strategy (2011-2016),
has endeavored to achieve EFA goals.

In this scope, Qatar has had many achievements, from raising school enrolment rates of all student
categories, to providing gender equity in education, and improving quality in all education aspects:
teachers’ competence, school curricula, school facilities, educational, health and social services and
facilities, and a safe learning environment. Focusing on children, youth, women and the elderly was
at the heart of the programs and projects of the Education and Training Sector Strategy which had
had the biggest impact on the progress towards achieving the required goals and performance
indicators in each of said categories.

The evident progress made in education confirms Qatar’s enormous efforts to be at the forefront of
countries that had achieved EFA goals. Though, this is not the end of the road, for our responsibility
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 3 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

towards our children and youth of both gender remains to provide them with education and learning
opportunities that will allow them to acquire the knowledge and life-skills that will help them succeed
in their lives and ensure the progress of their country.

I cannot but extend my thanks and gratitude to all the educational body and to all our partners in
this incumbent responsibility, from parents to public institutions to CSOs. They have all helped Qatar
reach a position we can all be proud of and a source of honor.

I would like here to also note that Qatar is highly appreciative of all the deployed efforts that have
been consolidated through EFA to become a marvelous example to follow in international partnerships
in reaching great achievements that will ensure our happiness on this Earth.

Dr. Mohamed Abdulwahid al-Hammadi

Minister of Education and Higher Education
Secretary General of the Supreme Education Council
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 5 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Introduction

With God’s help and under the guidance of its wise leadership, the State of Qatar progressed
steadily towards fulfilling its commitments to the International Community and UNESCO to achieve
the Dakar Framework of Action, Education For All (2000). For that purpose, Qatar has crossed many
important milestones in education and learning development, which in turn contributed to a
significant progress towards achieving the 6 Education For All (EFA) goals and improve EFA efficiency
and outcome, in line with Qatar National Vision 2030 and the Education and Training Sector Strategy
2011-2016 (ETSS).

Qatar has provided every child living in its territories qualitative free education through universal
education, equal access to education, widened education opportunities to include all the categories
and classes of society, and by providing adequate school environment and highly qualified teachers.
The State also paid special attention to early childhood education, increasing the number of nurseries
and kindergarten; providing for all the rights of children with disabilities; gender equity, adult
education opportunities for those who missed out on schooling opportunities in order to receive
qualitative education through adult education and parallel education programs, on-going education
etc., and to ensure the enrolment of all societal categories with the enactment of law no. 25 of 2001
amended by law no. 25 of 2009 on compulsory education and stronger sanctions on violators.

The State of Qatar exerted every effort to implement its international and humanitarian
commitments to the International Community by spreading and increasing EFA opportunities
in many of the friendly and brotherly states. It is worth noting the initiatives of HH Sheikh Tamim
bin Hamad Al-Thani – the Emir of Qatar and HH Sheikha Moza Bint Nasser – UNESCO Special Envoy
for Basic and Higher Education, to support education in many regions of the world, whereby
humanitarian and development aid and assistance provided by Qatar have reached between 2011
and 2012 around 3,001,764,025 QR benefiting a hundred states throughout the world to achieve the
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 7 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

MDGs by 2015. Qatar’s aid was not just limited to humanitarian and development aid; it proposed
several international initiatives for the support and dissemination of EFA, e.g. Protecting Education
in Insecurity and Conflict (PEIC) initiative, which was launched by the Education Above All (EAA)
foundation; Al-Fakhoura initiative for the support and protection of students and schools in conflict
zones; and the Educate a Child (EAC) initiative, which aims at finding practical solutions for providing
basic education for millions of children worldwide who were deprived of education.

By virtue of Ministerial Decree no. 37 of 2013, a special team was established to prepare the national
EFA report; it was in charge of collecting data and statistical indicators that would reflect Qatar’s
efforts in this field, while abiding by the definitions and axes included in UNESCO’s guidelines and
within the framework of the six EFA goals; all of which will be detailed in this report.

May God bless our efforts.

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Executive Summary

Qatar has made a great deal of progress towards achieving the six EFA goals through its commitment and engagement
to its citizens and the international community in providing education opportunities in its public and private systems
alike and providing access to all the population. Qatar’s National EFA Assessment Report refers to this development as
follows:

Part I: Social, Economic and Educational Context

This part addresses the social and economic context in Qatar as to the size and structure of the population and
economic activity, and the State’s comrehensive vision to achieve human and sustainable development economically,
socially and educationally in line with Qatar Vision 2030. It also addresses the pedagogical context and targeted aims
of education and training, and the promotion of education quality in all its forms and levels, the components of the
education system in Qatar, the public and private education scale, the number of students and schools and government
spending on national education.

Part II: EFA goals

It includes five goals as follows:

Goal 1

Expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and
disadvantaged children.
Results show that Qatar has made huge progress towards achieving this goal. Enrolment rates in kindergartens
rose from 27.3% in the base year 2000/2001 to 72.8% in 2011/2012. The number of public kindergartens rose to 51 in
2012/2013 due to the State’s concern in promoting preschool education. The number of students enrolled in Grade 1
Primary as part of Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) programs increased to 14,080 children with an increase of
4,001 children compared to the base year.
 9 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Goal 2

Ensuring that by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances and those belonging to ethnic
minorities, have access to, and complete, free and compulsory primary education of good quality.
This goal included legislations and policies related to achieving universal primary and basic education for every child
living on the Qatari soil; it also included primary education indices, net and gross enrolment rates for Grade 1 Primary,
which were 93.8% and 102.5% respectively in 2011/2012, while gross enrolment rates in the primary stage for females
and males 104.9% in 2011/2012. The goal also tackled qualified teachers to student ratios, retention and promotion rates
in Grade 5 and from the primary to the preparatory stages.

Goal 3

Ensuring that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate
learning and life-skills programs.
This goal eviews the State’s efforts to meet the goals of the National EFA Plan, the National Development Strategy
for Qatar 2011/2016, the national policies and legislations and Qatar Vision 2030 and agreements reached with CSOs
to develop technical and vocational education. It also includes the State’s efforts to promote literacy, life skills and
youth education rates as well as the enrolment rates in Secondary and technical and vocational (specialized) education
nationwide.

Goal 4

Achieving a 50 per cent improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for women, and equitable access to
basic and continuing education for all adults.
This goal addresses the State’s efforts and prominent accomplishments in adult education and literacy; relevant
legislations and policies; and outcome. Youth (15-24) literacy rates in 2013 reached 99%; during the same year, illiteracy
rate dropped to 2.5% for the 15 years and above age category.

Goal 5

Eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005, and achieving gender equity in education
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by 2015, with a focus on ensuring girls’ full and equal access to and achievement in basic education of good quality.
This goal refers to the State’s efforts to reach the goals of the National EFA Plan with regards to gender equity; and
relevant policies and legislations. It also include gender equity and equality in education in girls enrolment rates across
the different educational stages, enrolment rates per stage compared to males, and the number of female to male
teachers and principals.

Part III: Education Quality

Goal 6

Improving all aspects of the quality of education and ensuring excellence to all so that recognized and measurable
learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially in literacy, numeracy and basic life skills.
It includes national policies and legislations targeting and aiming at improving education quality. It also includes
education indicators that reflect the improvement in the quality of the education system among which, the increasing
number of qualified teachers in kindergartens and all educational stages, the adequacy of student/teacher ratios,
textbooks/education material per student ratio, suitable learning environment, public spending on education, share of
teachers’ salaries out of public spending on education and education development and improvement initiatives.

Part IV: Implementing EFA Strategies

This part tackles Qatar’s commitment to EFA strategies stipulated in Dakar 2000 that were translated into national
action plans for the education sector. They include: the Qatari Constitution (Articles 29 and 49); Qatar Vision 2030; the
Education and Training Sector Strategy 2011-2016, laws and legislations relevant to compulsory education, regional
and international EFA strategies, the Waqf Fund for Education and Health, expanding the private sector participation in
education, development of learning and assessment systems, improving teachers’ conditions and professional capacities,
and e-learning and e-facilities for teachers and students.

Part V: Relevance of EFA Framework

Qatar’s commitment to the Jomtien Declaration, Thailand 1995, and the Dakar Framework of Action 2000, is evident
in its progress towards achieving the EFA goals. The National EFA Plan 2003 was strongly in line with the outcomes of
 11 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

international conferences and complementary to the national education plans. EFA goals were also in harmony with the
main goals of Qatar Vision 2030.

Part VI: Post 2015 Horizon

Qatar has achieved most of the six EFA goals through a number of educational projects; a K-12 National Curriculum
Framework and a National Qualifications Framework were developed; expanding technology integration in education;
increasing school enrolment rates; improving students’ results in national and international examinations; improving
literacy rates and Gross Enrolment ratio in primary (103%) and secondary (94%) education. Qatar ranked first in the
Arab world and 36th globally in Human Development Index according to the latest Human Development Report. The
State focused to a great extent on the youth and women in the education, health and employment sectors. It adopted a
positive approach towards supporting and disseminating EFA worldwide which was translated into the many initiatives
declared and adopted by the State of Qatar.
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 13 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Part I
Social, Economic and
Educational Context
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Social, Economic and Educational Context:

First: Social and Economic Context:
Qatar is a peninsula located in the middle of the west coast of the Arabian Gulf, between 24° 27’ and 26° 10’ north
latitudes and 50° 45’ and 51° 40’ east longitudes. It stretches to the north over a total area of 11,521 km2. It is made
up of a number of islands, rocky formation and shallow waters along the coastline; the most famous islands are Halul,
Sharaouh, Al-Ashat, Al-Bashiriya, Al-Aliya and Al-Safiliya.
The terrain is flat and rocky with some low-rising limestone outcrops in Dukhan area in the west and Jabal Fiwairit in
the north. It is characterized by a number of khors, coves, inlets and depressions known as riyadh (gardens).
According to the 2014 census, the total population of Qatar is 2,155,446 inhabitants, 74.4% male and 25.6% female
and the main reason behind the high male population is that most of the population is made up of foreign workers
with a male predominance.

Table (1): Development of the population of Qatar

From 2004 to 2014

Year Male Female Total

2004 496,382 247,647 744,029

2010 1,284,739 414,696 1,699,435

2014 1,603,651 551,795 2,155,446

Qataris are Muslims. There are other religions in Qatar as the State welcomes every year huge numbers of foreign
workers to meet its ambitious development plans of different levels and specializations.
 15 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

1) Qatar National Vision 2030:

In 2008, His Highness Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani, the Father Emir, issued the Emiri Decree no. 44 to adopt
Qatar’s National Vision 2030. The comprehensive development vision aims at transforming the State of Qatar into
a developed country able to achieve sustainable development. Qatar’s vision is based on the principles of the
constitution and the guidelines of the political leadership to establish a society build on justice, security, equality and
the protection of public freedoms, moral and religious values and traditions as well as achieving equal opportunities
and consecrating security and stability.
The vision is based on four pillars mainly Human Development which targets the development and advancement of
the population to build a prosperous society. The second pillar is Social Development to create a just and safe society
based on ethics and social welfare and capable of interacting and comminicating with other societies. The third pillar
is Economic Development; it aims at developing a diversified and competitive national economy able to meet the
needs of the citizens of Qatar. The fourth pillar is Environmental Development to reach harmony and coordination
between economic and social development and protection of the environment. The Vision also sets general trends for
the future, allowing for elaborating strategies and executive plans.
Qatar’s National Development Strategy 2011-2016 which was the result of national consultations among all social
categories including the private sector and civil society, and which corresponded to the cultural and religious values
and needs of the future generations. The strategy covered 14 sectors including health, education and training, the
labor force, family cohesion, environment and others. Each sector’s strategy included a series of initiatives, programs
and projects.

2) Sustainable Development:

Sustainable development indicators in Qatar confirmed the fact that important changes were effected and further
progress was made in all development pillars; in social development, Qatar made tangible progress e.g. the progress
made in limiting unemployment, achieving gender equality, and reducing under-five child mortality rates.
While unemployment rate in developed western countries is at an unprecedented high, it is decreasing in Qatar
by 44%. In 2012, the unemployment rate was 0.5% due to the expansion of oil and gas production enterprises and
the creation of many public institutions and bodies that have provided new job opportunities. We add to that the
narrowing gender gap in education, health and social work and the almost closed gap in the field of finance, real-
estate, administration and trade.
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One of the most important indicators of social development is the declining under-five child mortality rate. Here,
Qatar (8.8 per 1000) is getting closer to the developed countries’ rate (6 per 1000) knowing that the global rate is 55
and 108 in LDCs.
As for the economy, the latest statistics reveal that Qatar is at an exceptional stage of its history as it progresses
towards achieving a comprehensive, integrated and sustainable development, and even an accelerated one. Qatar has
seen high investment rates whereby the investment to GDP ratio (28.56% in 2012) exceeded that of the developed
countries (18.8%) and the global ratio (23.6%). Qatar ranked first worldwide as to GDP per capita with 104,000 USD in
2012, three times higher than that of the developed countries with 34,000 USD. As for the gross employment rate, it
also exceeds the average rate with 99.5% in 2012 compared to the EU countries with 90.4% and the OECD with 92.1%.

3) Other Indicators:
• 100% of the population enjoys primary health care coverage.
• Childhood immunization against infectious diseases rose to 96%.
• 100% of the population has sanitation services.
• 100% of the population has access to safe drinking water.
• In 2012, FDI to GDP was 1% thus higher than that of KSA (6%), UAE (5,8%) and Kuwait (4.4%).
• ODA (0.54% of GDP in 2012) was higher that of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) (0.29% in 2014).
• A high percentage of public expenditures was allocated to education (13%).

Second: Educational Context:

Qatar invested greatly in the best education practices. Such investments are ongoing to adapt to the requirements
of basic and higher education and to standardize them in order to fulfill the needs of competences of a most
diversified economy while respecting the Qatari cultural values and heritage.
The wise Qatari leadership has acknowledged the importance of education as the key to sustainable and
comprehensive development because it is the foundation for investing in the human capital.
 17 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

1- The Pillar of Human Development is “Development of all its people to enable them to sustain a prosperous
society”.

The State of Qatar has among its first pillar of Human Development the area of “educated citizens” which aims at
building an educational system that abides by the latest global standards and is equal to the best educational systems
worldwide. This system provides citizens with opportunities to develop their capacities as well as the best training
opportunities in order to succeed in a changing world with increasing education requirements. It also promotes
analytical and critical thinking and develops the creative and innovative capacity and stresses the importance of social
cohesion and the respect of the values and heritage of the Qatari society while calling for a constructive relation with
the peoples of the world.

Education and Training Goals:

• A world-class educational system that equips citizens to achieve their aspirations and to meet the needs of Qatar’s
society.
• A national network of formal and non-formal educational programs that equip Qatari children and youth with the
skills and motivation to contribute to society
• Well-developed, independent, self-managing and accountable educational institutions operating under centrally-
determined guidelines
• An effective system for funding scientific research shared by the public and private sectors and conducted in
cooperation with specialized international organizations and leading international research centers
• A significant international role in cultural and intellectual activity and scientific research

2- Education and Training Strategy:

The Education and Training Strategy identifies 20 outcomes and 29 relevant projects including the following:

2-1 Tackling education and training issues through:

• Elaborating and implementing a comprehensive strategic ten-year plan for all stakeholders.
• Promoting the values of the Qatari society as well as the national identity and Arab and Islamic culture across
education and training stages.
• Elaborating a plan for the development of the labor force and institutions (developing education and training
professionals and institutions).
• Integrating ICT in the educational, administrative and developmental processes.
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• Using the developed education and training database by main stakeholders for policymaking.
• Outreach and increase awareness of the benefits of education.
2-2 Improving general education by:
• Mainstreaming high quality K-12education.
• Providing consistent high quality K-12 education.
• Supporting K-12 students to achieve their full potentials and capacities.
• Providing suitable education options to meet the needs of students with special needs.
• Increasing career and academic counseling and guidance on the required skills for future work environments.
• Promoting societal participation and increasing the contribution of the society sectors in general education.
• Providing alternatives of adult basic education programs.
2-3 Improving higher education through:
• Align higher education with the needs of the knowledge-based economy.
• Provide alternative pathways to tertiary education.
2-4 Promoting Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) through:
• Developing an organizational model in TVET and developing the necessary capacities for it.
• Developing an organizational framework to align TVET with the education sector and labor market needs.
• Aligning TVET programs with the needs of the Qatari society and the labor market.
• Highlighting the importance and stature of TVET programs.
2-5 improving scientific research by:
• Achieving a higher level of scientific innovation.
3- Organizing the Supreme Education Council (SEC):

The Supreme Education Council (SEC) was established in 2002. The Emiri Decree no. 14 organizing the SEC was
adopted in 2009; it stipulated that the SEC is “the higher competent authority for education development”.
 19 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Among the SEC functions:

• Drafting the national education policy and linking it to the objectives, plans and programs of education in light of
Qatar National Vision 2030.
• Devising plans, programs and control systems necessary to implement the national policy for education.
• Approving international quality standards for the performance of all facilities and public and private educational
service providers.
• Approving the organizational structures of the Council’s institutions of and its subsidiary bodies, and the
appropriation of funds within its budget.
• Designing and implementing the Council’s funds investment system.
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The SEC encompasses three main institutes:

• Education Institute
• Evaluation Institute
• Higher Education Institute
Every institute has a number of mandates and functions. There is also a number of offices and supporting units that
assist the SEC including: Office of Information Technology, Shared Services Department, Research and Policy Analysis
Office and Office of Communications.
4- Components of the Education System:

The State provides different types of education:

4-1 General public education:

it includes public kindergartens (free and not compulsory) and K-12 schools (compulsory and free). They are under
the SEC supervision and follow-up administratively, financially and organizationally.
Public education includes the following levels:
• Kindergarten: two levels
• Primary: six levels/grades
• Preparatory: three levels/grades
• Secondary: three levels/grades that branch out into different tracks following Grade 10.
 21 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

The following table shows the education levels of the general public education.
Table (2): Education levels of general public education

Stage Grade Remarks

Kindergarten
Kindergarten Starts from 4 years of age
Preparatory
1
2
3
Primary
4
5
6
7
Preparatory 8
9
10 Following Grade 10 a student chooses
Secondary 11 the suitable track among available
12 education tracks

4-2 Private Education:

In light of the State’s effort to build partnerships with the private sector and allow it to contribute and invest in
the education sector, individuals, institutions and companies were allowed to open private schools in addition to
community schools and international schools. This type of education covers kindergartens and general education.
Type of private schools:
• International schools
• Community schools
• Schools that provide Qatari curriculum standards.
Private education in Qatar is growing steadily in student populations and school numbers. 56% of the student
population in Qatar is enrolled in private schools. The following table details the number of students and schools in
the private sector by stage for the academic year 2012/2013.
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Table (3): Students and schools in the private sector by stage in 2012/2013

Stage No. of students No. of schools

Kindergarten 26,222 143
Primary 61,402 109
Preparatory 20,106 79
Secondary 13,508 65
Total 121,238 396

The number of public schools was 261, distributed geographically across the country. As for student numbers, it was
96,720 in 2012/2013. The following table details the student population in public schools.

Table (4): Students and schools in the public sector in 2012/2013

Stage No. of Students No. of Schools

Kindergarten 6,982 50
Primary 44,540 102
Preparatory 22,222 55
Secondary 22,976 53
Total 96,720 260

This increasing number of students in the private sector and expanding number of schools due to the high increase
in the number of foreign workers coming to Qatar, its economic openness and development projects. The Educational
Vouchers system for Qatari students and parents favoring private school education for their children so as to acquire
English language, believing that private schools provide a better quality education.
 23 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

4-3 Parallel Education (night school – home schooling):

Qatar gives great importance to literacy and adult education since the early beginnings of its education system,
since the 1950’s. Since the creation of the Department of Ma’arif (Education), night education as known at the time,
was given equal attention to day education. The first literacy and adult education center was inaugurated, following
the establishment of the Ministry of Ma’arif in 1957/1958, and the first department in the organizational chart of the
Ministry was the “department of night education and examinations”. The focus on this sector grew and special relevant
curricula were elaborated following the growing number of centers.

Illiteracy rates in Qatar for the two age categories 15-24 and 15 years and above decreased as shown in the following
table.

Table (5): Illiteracy rates in Qatar

Year 2010 2011 2012 2013

Age Group

15-24 3.6 2.4 1.3 1

15 and above 3.5 3.4 3.3 2.5

This type of education is divided into:

Night school: (literacy and adult education):

This type provides education for uneducated adults and those without reading, writing and numeracy skills, as well
as adults of both genders who were unable to complete their education and who wish to go back to the education
system and study at night.
Literacy rates in Qatar have witnessed a notable increase during the period of 2006-2012, from 89.5% in 2006
to 96.7% in 2012, i.e. an annual increase of 1.1% due to the steps taken by the government such as compulsory
education, adult literacy programs and plans to spread education at a national scale.
Supreme Education Council 24

Home schooling:

This type of education is for students who were not able to enroll in the general education system during the day or
night school for acceptable reasons approved by the SEC. It starts with Grade 1 up to Grade 12 and it coincides with
the education levels of the daytime education.

Table (6): Parallel education levels

Level Grade Night school Home schooling

First First
First cycle
Second Second
Third Third
Primary Second cycle
Fourth Fourth
Fifth Fifth Fifth
Sixth Sixth Sixth
Seventh Seventh Seventh
Preparatory Eighth Eighth Eighth
Ninth Ninth Ninth
Tenth Tenth Tenth
Secondary Eleventh Eleventh Eleventh
Twelfth Twelfth Twelfth

4-4 Technical and Vocational Education:

When following the track of the education system in the earlier phase, we notice a great deal of attention to technical
education and its development so as to meet the latest developments in the economic, industrial and construction
sectors in Qatar as well as the needs in labor force. Several agreements were signed to operate technical schools to
increase partnerships with the relevant entities and institutions. The SEC has signed an operation agreement with Qatar
Petroleum to operate Qatar Independent Technical Secondary School for Boys in 2012; an operation agreement was
 25 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

also signed between the SEC and the Central Bank of Qatar to operate Qatar Independent Secondary School for Banking
Sciences and Business Management for Boys in 2011; in addition to the Secondary School of the Religious Preparatory
and Secondary Institute for Boys that was developed to keep up with the development of independent schools in terms
of curricula, education programs and teachers and school leadership training and development.

5- Education Spending:

In light of its keen interest in education, the State has allocated the necessary financial resources to the sector and
funded it; it even established a Waqf Fund for Education and Health.
The following table shows the progression of education spending between 2000/2001 and 2012/2013.

Table (7): Government spending on education

between 2000/2001-2012/2013

Year Currency Gross Government Spending

QR 1,677,630,000.00
2000/2001 USD 460,887,362.64
QR 4,576,471,548.02
2005/2006 USD 1,257,272,403.30
QR 16,160,536,876.28
2010/2011 USD 4,439,707,933.04
QR 21,420,100,264.73
2012/2013 USD 5,884,642,929.87

It is evident from the previous table that the government spending on education has increased manifolds. The
education sector received 10.8% of the general budget of the State in 2013.
Supreme Education Council 26

Figure (1): Education spending (USD) for the academic years

Spending in USD (2000/2001 – 2012/2013)

Years

As for the cost per student, the following table shows the average cost per student.

Table (8): Cost per student in 2005/2006-2012/2013

Year Cost in QR
2005/2006 37,982
2010/2011 49,080
2011/2012 64,637
2012/2013 87,837

From the previous table, it is evident that the cost per student has been increasing throughout the years and that is
due to inflation and increase in teachers’ wages.
27 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015
Supreme Education Council 28
 29 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Part II
Education For All Goals
Supreme Education Council 30
 31 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Part II
Education For All Goals
Goal 1: Early Childhood Care and Education
1) Expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially
for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children

2) Early childhood in the National EFA Plan and the Strategic Plan 2011/2016:

Qatar is keen on making available additional education opportunities in the public and private education
systems alike and on disseminating it among all the population categories as it believes in the importance of
investing in education as the most important element of human development.
The State of Qatar also focused especially on early childhood education. It enacted the Strategic Early Education
Plan and established kindergartens annexed to independent primary schools and equipped them in line with
the latest international specifications. It also provided a safe environment that motivates young children to
be creative; special early education curricula were elaborated and clear safety and security standards were
established for public and private kindergartens.
The National EFA Plan (2002-2015) singled out a special section for this goal addressing the real situation of early
childhood in Qatar (kindergarten) and then analyzing it qualitatively and quantitatively. Quantitatively, the size
of the kindergarten sector, numbers of institutions and of enrolled children and enrolment rate, is addressed
as well as the efforts made by the private and public sectors that enjoy unlimited support by the government.
Qualitatively, internal efficiency, i.e. the number of children by nursery and semester, was addressed in addition
to the situation of faculty members.
Some of the main objectives of the early childhood axis are the enrolment of out-of-school children to reach
a 100% enrolment rate in kindergartens, building public kindergartens to absorb a bigger number of children,
integrating kindergartens in the education system, making kindergarten enrolment compulsory, training
qualified staff for kindergartens and providing the private sector with land to build kindergartens.
The 2011-2016 Strategic Plan for Early Education includes improving the quality of early education programs
in general from kindergarten to Grade 12 (K-12), adopting in the future a compulsory education system since
kindergarten, increasing education opportunities for young children, helping children widen their scope of
Supreme Education Council 32

interest and knowledge of their environment and society and positively interacting with both.
3) Relevant Policies and Legislations:

Qatar pays great attention to early childhood education in all pedagogical, health, social and cultural aspects.
Among the adopted legislations:
1) Ministerial decree no. 4 of 2004 for the creation of a higher committee for the dissemination of the culture
of the convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) in schools.
2) Ministerial decree no. 6 of 2004 for the establishment of the Higher Committee for the Supervision of the
Education Inclusion Program for Children with Special Needs.
3) The 2011-2016 National Strategy included the elaboration of education policies, legislations and
structures related to compulsory kindergarten education and the establishment of an infrastructure plan
to guaranty the capacity to absorb all children, in line with the relevant goal.
4) Qatar ratified a number of international conventions pertaining to children such as the CRC of 1995, and
committed to the goals of the Action Plan of the World Summit for Children of 2000.
4) ECCE Indicators:

The SEC aims at elaborating compulsory kindergarten education policies in the coming years with the aim of
raising enrolment rates at an early age.
Hereinafter are the main indicators related to the first goal:
4.1 GER in ECCE:

Table (9): GER in Kindergarten 2000/2001 to 2011/2012 (1)

Academic year Male Female Total GEI
2001/2000 28.1 26.5 27.3 0.94
2005/2006 - - 42.5 0.94
2012/2011 73.55 71.96 72.77 0.98

‫ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ‬
(1) Source: Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics, Annual Statistical Group, Chapter on Education, Chapter on Population.
 33 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

The previous table shows that:

• GER in kindergarten has increased from 27.3% in the base year (2000/2001) to 72.77% in 2011/2012
with an increase of 45.47%. This is a result of the SEC policy of increasing the number of kindergartens
to absorb the rise in early childhood education enrolment rates in line with the education policies,
legislations and structures of both the National EFA Plan and the Education and Training Sector Strategy
(ETSS) 2011-2016.
Figure (2): GER in kindergartens
(2000/2001-2011L2012)
%

Year
• As for Gender Equity Index (GEI):
We notice that a rise in male and female enrolment rates is quite similar. Male enrolment rates in
kindergarten were about 28.1% and 73.55% in 2000/2001 and 2011/2012 respectively, i.e. an increase of
45.45 percentage points, while female enrolment rates were around 27.3% and 72.77% respectively i.e.
an increase of 45.46 percentage points.
Supreme Education Council 34

The GEI indicates in general an increase in enrolment rates in favor of girls from 0.94 in 2000/2001 to 0.98
in 2011/2012. As such gender equality in enrolment at this level is achieved.
• Regarding the number of kindergartens we can deduce the following:

Figure (3): Number of kindergartens by type of education (public-private)

in 2000/2001-2012/2013
No. of schools

Year

Public Private

• The number of kindergartens in the private sector was much higher than that of the public sector during
the period of 2001-2013. This is due to the fact that early childhood education was not part of the general
education policies and only the Ministry of Education (formerly) supervised such kindergartens.
• An increase in the number of public kindergartens, as in 2000/2001 there were none, and thanks to the
SEC projects and policies to build kindergartens, 51 kindergartens had been established by 2012/2013.
The number of private kindergartens kept growing to 90 in 2000/2001 and then to 138 in 2012/2013.
 35 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Qatar’s focus on this education level was translated in the SEC policies. The Strategic Plan for Early Education provided
for the creation of kindergartens annexed to independent primary schools, to be equipped according to the latest
international standards and specifications pertaining to a motivating learning environment and clear safety and security
standards for private and public kindergartens.
Supreme Education Council 36

4.2 Percentage of new entrants to Primary Grade 1 of those previously enrolled in ECCE programs
The following table details the percentage of new entrants to Grade 1 primary of those who were enrolled in
kindergartens.

Table (10): Percentage of new entrants to Primary Grade 1 of students previously enrolled in
kindergartens by gender and equality index from 2000/2001 to 2012/2013 (1)

% of newly enrolled children in first primary

Academic following kindergarten enrollment GEI
year
Male Female Total

2001/2000 37.3 34.7 36.0 0.93

2005/2006 - - 86 0.96

2013/2012 72.8 70.9 71.9 0.97

The previous table reveals the increasing percentage of first entrants to the Grade 1 out of those who were enrolled in
kindergartens from 36% in the base year 2000/2001 to a remarkable 71.9% in 2012/2013.
It also reveals that gender equity has been achieved as GEI registered 0.97% in 2012/2013.

‫ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ‬
(1) Annual statistical report 2000/2001, Annual Education Statistics in Qatar 2012/2013
 37 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

4.3 Percentage of trained ECCE teachers

The following table shows the percentage of qualified teachers for ECCE programs.

Table (11): Number and percentage of academically qualified teachers in kindergarten

2000/2001 to 2012/2013

% of teachers with
qualification at
Academic year Post-Secondary Graduate Postgraduate Total
graduate level and
above

2001/2000 181 334 24 539 66

2005/2006 395 - 1283 1678 76.5

2013/2012 544 1375 234 2153 75

From the table above we can deduce the following:

• The number of kindergarten teachers has increased considerably between 2000/2001and 2012/2013 from 539
teachers in 2000/2001 to 2153 teachers in 2012/2013.
• Most kindergarten teachers have graduate and post-graduate qualification, 66% of kindergarten personnel in
2000/2001 and 75% in 2012/2013.
• Kindergarten staff with graduate and postgraduate qualification has increased from 66% of staff members in
2000/2001 to 75% in 2012/2013. This data reveals that the SEC is keen on having qualified and trained teachers
work in kindergartens.
Supreme Education Council 38

Figure (4): Percentage (%) of kindergarten teachers with qualification

at graduate level and above (2000/2001 – 2011/2012)

2001/2000 2006/2005 2012/2011

Year

The SEC aims at improving the quality of education through partnership with the Faculty of Education at Qatar University
and to train kindergarten teachers and teachers’ assistants through special early childhood education programs.
The Education Institute of the SEC has endeavored to strengthen full academic support to kindergartens in order to
follow-up and activate the early education system through standards that correspond to children’s intellectual and
assimilation capacity and to provide training programs for new Entry teachers, teachers and subject coordinators.
The role of the Curriculum Standards Office of the Education Institute is to organize workshops to develop, activate
and educate, that include all the female coordinators, teachers and assistant teachers of the early education levels. Such
trainings are built based on the field needs and field and follow-up visits conducted by the Education Institute with
the aim of developing educational and school practices and provide qualitative support to female coordinators and
teachers.
 39 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

5) Additional Indicators:
As a result of the expansion in opening public and private kindergartens, we notice that the pupil/teacher ratio is 15:1
in 2012/2013 while it was 17:1 in 2000/2001. The average density of children per kindergarten was 172 children per
kindergarten in 2012/2013 compared with 103 children per kindergarten in 2000/2001 thanks to the surge in children
enrolment in kindergartens.

6) Challenges:
The ECCE goal faces many challenges and difficulties namely:
• Provide a number of buildings for kindergartens to accommodate children in this level especially that
there is a trend within SEC to adopt compulsory education in kindergartens.
• Provide and train national staff to work in kindergartens.
• Lack of awareness by many parents as to the importance of this education stage in shaping the personality
and capacities of their children.
Supreme Education Council 40

7) Conclusion:
Aforementioned results show that kindergarten enrolment rate has increased from 27.3% in 2000/2001 to 72.8%
in 2011/2012 with an increase of over 266% as a result of the State’s interest in expanding kindergarten education.
In 2000/2001, all kindergartens were in the private sector; however public kindergartens grew exponentially to 51 in
2012/2013. Also, the number of students in the Grade 1 of the primary stage who had been in ECCE programs increased
to 14,080 students in 2012/2013 with an increase of 4,001 students compared to the base year 2000/2001.
 41 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Goal 2: Universal Primary Education

1) Ensuring that by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances and
those belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to, and complete, free and compulsory
primary education of good quality.

2) EFA in the National Plan and Education and Training Sector Strategy (ETSS):
Education has been at the center of the State and all sectors’ interest as one of the main entry points to human
development and one of the main elements of investment. Qatar has exerted huge efforts to disseminate education
and a significant budget was allocated to achieve equal access to the right of education for all segments in society.
The National EFA plan has dedicated a special part to this goal. The second part of the plan exposes the status of basic
education in Qatar (primary and preparatory); it also analyzes the State’s performance qualitatively and quantitatively
as the education opportunities (quantitative dimension) have been addressed represented in the size of the formal
(public) and private basic education by disseminating the data of students, schools, faculty and administrative staff
and enrolment indicators which show the capacity of the education system to meet the demand and its efficiency in
facilitating the enrolment of school-aged students.
These quantitative aspects of basic education reflect the significant efforts of the State in this sector by providing free
education for all as well as the efforts in favor of the private education sector by providing the technical expertise and
financial and human capabilities.
As for the qualitative aspects discussed and presented in this part, it focused on the quality level of the education
services provided basic education students i.e. the suitable numbers of students in schools and classrooms, the number
of pupils per teacher, as well as the quality of textbooks and schools buildings that are well equipped and provide all
physical needs of students and the student-friendly school environment. In addition, this part highlights the proposed
projects and programs pertaining to achieving the second EFA goal that is to absorb all children and adults of both
gender that are of school-age by 2015, limit drop-outs, improve all education quality aspects, ensure excellence for
all by improving teachers’ competency, reduce pupil-teacher ratios, develop curriculum development to raise Qatar’s
curricula to international standards.
The Education and Training Sector Strategy has addressed this goal in its second program which stresses the need to
“improve general K-12 education (from kindergarten to Grade 12); the program included 13 projects that are:
• Establish education policies that include mandatory kindergarten and mandatory secondary schooling,
so as to achieve an adjusted net enrollment ratio (NER) of over 95% throughout K-12 schooling
Supreme Education Council 42

• Develop an infrastructure plan to ensure there is sufficient capacity for all children in order to start
provision
• Enhance the institutional capacity to improve the quality of education in private schools
• Provide incentives to, and attract, outstanding schools to establish branch campuses in Qatar through
the Outstanding Schools Program
• Align and coordinate K-12, Higher education, and TVET programs and services and establish feedback
mechanisms
• Improve the breadth and quality of the national curriculum, learning resources and programs to address
the diverse learning needs of all students including the educational and working skills needed to enable
them to fulfill their potential
• Improve the specialized education system ensuring high quality education for students with additional
educational support needs (AESN)
• Design and implement initiatives to enhance the students’ overview of the work environment and to
strengthen the link between schools and the labor market
• Enhance community and parents involvement in schools
• Enhance parents’ ability to be involved in decisions about their children’s education
• Increase stakeholder awareness of, and participation in, the development of education and training
sector policies and strategies
• Improve and expand the basic education programs for adults, including basic numeracy and literacy,
and provide equivalent pathways
3) Policies and Legislations Related to Achieving Basic Education:
Among the legislations adopted by the State to achieve this goal, we can mention the articles of the constitution of
the State of Qatar especially Articles 25 and 49. Article 25 stipulates that: “Education is one of the basic pillars of social
progress. The State shall ensure, foster and promote education”, while Article 49 stipulates that:”All citizens have the right to
education, and the State shall endeavour to make general education compulsory and free of charge in accordance with the
applicable laws and regulations of the State.”
In addition, the Emiri Decree no. 25 of September 2001 stipulated that education is compulsory to all children in Qatar,
which paved the way for the Ministerial Decree no. 48 of 2001 about the creation of a committee to study and elaborate
enforcement mechanism for the compulsory education law. Among the legislation linked to achieving basic education:
Ministerial Decree no. 4 of 2004 about the creation of the Higher Committee for the dissemination of the Culture of the
Convention on the Rights of the Child in Schools; and the Ministerial Decree no. 6 of 2004 about the creation of the
 43 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Higher Committee for the Supervision of the Education Inclusion Program for Children with Special Needs; also law no.
25 of 2009 on the amendment of the provisions of law no. 25 of 2001 about the enforcement of tougher sanctions if the
child custodian refrains from sending him/her to school during the compulsory education phase without an acceptable
excuse.
On the other hand, the Education Strategy (2011-2016) includes the provision of special educational options for children
with disabilities, the elaboration of education policies and education legislations and structures for kindergarten and
secondary education, establish a plan for the infrastructure to ensure the capacity to accommodate all children, and
promote the participation of parents in making decisions in relation with their children’s education.
4) Primary Education Indicators:
Hereinafter is a summary of what has been achieved for this goal from 2000/2001 to 2011/2012.
Main indicators:

4-1 Gross admission/enrolment ratio in primary education

The SEC focuses all its efforts and guidance on providing education for all children and mainstream education services.
Huge efforts are deployed to build schools ensuring all services that would help provide a distinguished compulsory
education and absorb the increasing number of students. The SEC organizes relevant regulations and laws pertaining
to students’ affairs in public education schools (independent schools) and private education schools and enrolment
conditions in said schools. One of the enrolment conditions in Grade 1 is that the legal schooling age is six years while
that of private schools could be less than six.
The following table presents gross and net enrolment rates in the Grade 1 of the primary stage:
Table (12): NER and GER distribution in the first primary
2000/2001 – 2011/2012(1)

NER GER
Academic year
M F Total M F Total
2001/2000 75.5 93.0 83.1 85.1 103.4 93.1
2011/2010 90.3 90.6 90.5 99.4 99.1 99.3
2012/2011 93.6 94.0 93.8 102.5 102.6 102.5
(1) Source: Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics – Qatar
Supreme Education Council 44

The results of table (12) and Figure (5) show that gross and net enrolment rates (GER/NER) for 2010/2011 are 90.5%
and 99.3% respectively and those for 2011/2012 are respectively 93.8% and 102.5% respectively. These rates show
that gross and net enrolment rates in Grade 1 are increasing yearly. When comparing the base year (2000/2001) to the
academic year 2011/2012 as a target year, we notice that the net enrolment rate increased by 10.7 percentage points in
2011/2012 compared to the base year 2000/2001.

Figure (5): GER and NER in Grade 1 (Primary Stage)

(2000/2001 – 2011/2012)
%

2001/2000 2011/2010 2012/2011

Year
NER GER

Previous results show that Qatar has made huge strides in the enrolment rate in the Grade 1 as the enrolment rate
(net average) of under-six students was 94% of the total number of children of this age, a percentage that is close to
that of developed countries. It is also higher in the global GER that is 90% and there is no gender gap between male
and female enrolment rates as seen in goal 5 of this report. This was the result of Qatar’s education policy and relevant
legislations that aim at providing comprehensive and free education for all, for both sexes, whereby education provides
all the pedagogical requirements to insure the success of the educational process.
 45 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

4-2 Enrolment rates in primary education (1-6)

Enrolment rates in Qatar surged during the last years. The SEC (formerly Ministry of Education and Higher Education)
exerted noticeable efforts since committing to the six EFA goals. This is evident in the progress made in the amended NER
from 84.6% in 2000/2001 to around 94% in 2011/2012, which means that there is a sustainable expansion in education
services delivery and new schools built to accommodate the increasing growth in the number of students every year,
which coincides with the population growth nationwide.

Table (13): NER and GER distribution in the primary stage (1-6)
for 2000/2001 – 2011/2012 (1)

Net Enrolment Rate Gross Enrolment Rate

Academic year NER GER
M F Total M F Total
2001/2000 76.8 94.5 84.6 99.0 107.8 103.0
2011/2010 90.3 90.6 90.5 106.0 104.5 105.3
2012/2011 93.6 94.0 93.8 103.5 104.9 104.2

(1) Source: Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics – Qatar

Supreme Education Council 46

Figure (6): GER and NER in primary education (1-6)

For 2000/2001 – 2011/2012

Male Female Total Male Female Total

Net enrolment Rate Gross enrolment Rate

Table 13 and Figure 6 show that GER in the primary stage (1-6) was 104.2% in 2012/2012 with an increase of 1.2%
compared to the base year (2000/2001). Male and female GER in 2000/2001 – 2011/2012 was respectively 103.5%
and 104.9%. When comparing the results, we notice the decline in female gross enrolment rate during the base year
compared to that of 2011/2012, which could be due to the structure of the Qatari population as a result of the incoming
expat immigration and population movement.
On another note, NER in the primary stage (1-6) reached 93.8% in 2011/2012 with a 9.2% increase compared to the
base year 2000/2001. Male and female net enrolment rates were respectively 84.6% and 93.8% during the academic
years 2000/2001 and 2011/2012. The increase in GER and NER tips in favor of females. In general, the general students’
number in the primary stage is growing yearly. Comparing the base year (2000/2001) to the academic year 2011/2012
(as a target year), the increase in students’ numbers was of 38,959 students.
The State’s focus is not only limited to public education, it also encompasses private education as the SEC supervises it
and encourages competition with the public sector in terms of the quality of the learning outcome. The previous tables
reflected data of both the private and public sectors.
 47 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Table (14): Distribution of registered students in the primary stage by gender and education type for
2000/2001-2012/2013(1)

Academic Year Gender Public (%) Private (%)

Male 58.1 41.9
2000/2001 Female 63.4 36.6
Total 60.7 39.3
Male 49.8 50.2
2005/2006 Female 57.6 42.4
Total 53.6 46.4
Male 39.5 60.5
2011/2012 Female 45.1 54.9
Total 42.2 57.8
Male 39.2 60.8
2012/2013 Female 45.0 55.0
Total 42.0 58.0

Figure (7): Distribution of students of the primary stage by gender

%

M F Total M F Total M F Total M F Total

2001/2000 2006/2005 2012/2011 2013/2012

Years

Public Private
(1) Source: SEC annual statistical reports from 2000/2001 to 2012/2013
Supreme Education Council 48

Table (14) and Figure (7) show an increase in the percentage of registered students in the private education compared
with the public education in 2012/2013, an increase of 18.7 percentage points in favor of private education while in
the base year, public education enrolment rates exceeded that of private education, which could be explained by the
growing population, economic, urban and industrial expansion that has attracted foreign labor and thus the latter’s
demand for enrolling their children in private schools especially international schools.
4-3 Repetition rate by gender, grade and education type for 2000/2001-2012/2013
Qatar aims at improving education quality so as to improve education outcomes and thus reduce repetition rates
through a number of policy improvements to achieve said reduction. In light of the initiative on developing the education
system and opening new independent schools (public schools), the education system is endeavoring to limit drop-out
rates and increase retention and completion rates, through a number of procedures such as diversification of learning
resources, curricula development, classroom and extra-curricular activities, diversification of teaching methods and
means, integration of IT in teaching and learning processes, focusing on a safe and motivating school environment and
the adoption of diversified assessment methods.

Table (15): Number of repeaters and percentage of repetitions in the primary stage by gender,
education type and academic year (1)
Education Repetition rate in primary education in 2012-2013 No. of
Academic year gender average
type Grade1 Grade2 Grade3 Grade4 Grade5 Grade 6 repeaters
Public Male 2.6 2.5 1.8 2.8 1.1 - 816 2.6
2005/2006
Private Female 2.5 0.1 0.2 0.2 0.9 - 132 0.5
Male 4.2 1.3 0.7 0.9 0.4 0.2 265 1.3
Public
Female 3.6 1.2 0.6 0.6 0.2 0.2 244 1.1
2011/2012
Male 2.4 1.7 1.4 1.0 1.8 1.0 499 1.6
Private
Female 1.9 1.2 1.2 1.0 1.0 1.2 347 1.2
Male 4.6 0.8 1 3.2 1.9 1.9 475 2.2
Public
Female 3.5 0.8 0.7 1.1 0.8 0.7 300 1.3
2012/2013
Male 1.9 1.6 2 1.5 2.1 3.6 678 2.1
Private
Female 1.9 1.0 1.0 0.8 1.5 1.1 356 1.2

(1) Source: SEC database – Office of Information Technology

 49 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Table (15) shows that the highest repetition rate was in public schools in 2012/2013 with 4.6% of Grade 1 students
(males), which is 475 repeaters in the primary stage, followed by male repetition rate in Grade 6 of private schools, with
3.6% of 678 repeaters in primary education. These repetition rates are the highest in both private and public schools.
As for the lowest repetition rate for males and females (0.8%) in public schools, it was in the Grade 2 (Primary Stage).
The lowest repetition rate in private schools (0.6%) was for females in Grade 4.
Table (15) reveals also that the highest repetition rates in 2011/2012 were in public schools with respectively 4.2%
and 3.6% of male and female students of Grade 1, i.e. 265 male students and 244 female students, followed by male
repetition rate in Grade 1 in private schools with 2.4%, i.e. 499 students. These repetition rates are the highest repetition
rates in public and private schools. The lowest rate was 0.2% for males and females in public schools in Grade 6; as for
private schools in 2011/2012, the lowest repetition rate was 1,0% for females of Grade 4 and Grade 5.
In conclusion, for the primary stage, public schools register a higher average repetition rate in Grades 1 to 5 than in
private schools. This could be due to the fact that most private schools adopt yearly activities and the automatic promotion
system from one grade to the higher one, while public schools adopt the semester assessment and examination system
in one academic year; national examinations account for 30% of the final student score.

4-4 Success rates in primary education for the period of 2000/2001 – 2012/2013
The primary stage is one of three stages of the education system in Qatar and it extends over six years. The following
table shows success rates in Grade 6.

Table (16): Success rate in Grade 6 for 2001-2013(1)

Students enrolled in Grade 6 Successful Success

Academic year
Public Private Total students rate

2001/2000 5948 3308 9256 8608 93

2005/2006 6305 4642 10947 10180 93
2011/2012 6831 8016 14847 14476 97.5
2012/2013 7195 8556 15751 15194 96.5
‫ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ‬
(1) Source: Annual statistical report from 2000/2001 to 2009/2010, Ministry of Education and Higher Education.
Supreme Education Council 50

Table (16) shows that with every year, the number of students in Grade 6 was increasing in both private and public
schools. Results reveal a fluctuation in the success rates over the years, from 93% in the base year 2000/2001 to 97.5%
in 2011/2012 and back to 96.5% in 2012/2013. In general, success rates are high in comparison with other countries.

4-5 School retention rate up to Grade 5:

School retention until the Grade 5 is considered one of the important indicators to control and monitor the process
of achieving universal primary education. This indicator is used in assessing the internal efficiency of the educational
system as to its ability to retain students in such system.

Table (17): Retention rate until Grade 5 by gender, for 2001-2012(1)

Total retention rate
Academic year Male Female
until grade 5
2001/2002-2005/2006 89.3 93.1 91.3

2007/2008-2011-2012 89.6 93.5 91.6

Figure (8): Retention rate until primary Grade 5 by gender

%

Male Female Total retention rate until

grade 5

2006/2005 2002/2001 2012/2011 2008/2007

‫ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ‬
(1) Source: Annual statistical report from 2000/2001 to 2009/2010, Ministry of Education and Higher Education
(2) Source: Annual education statistics for the State of Qatar from 2010/2011, SEC.
 51 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Results of table (17) and Figure (8) show that retention rate until Grade 5 of the primary stage was around 91.6%
between 2008-2012, which is an acceptable rate from an educational perspective and slightly higher than the retention
rate until Grade 5 of the primary stage between 2002-2006. Results also show that the female rate is higher than male
rate, with about 93.5%, which according to educators goes back to the high motivation among girls in society to learn.

4-6 Promotion rate from primary to preparatory and from preparatory to secondary stages:
The basic education stage in Qatar stretches from Grade 1 to Grade 9 and the post-basic stage from Grade 10 to Grade
12. Table (18) reflects promotion rates from the Primary to the preparatory and from the preparatory to the Secondary
stages.

Table (18): Promotion rates in public and private education from the primary to the preparatory and from
the preparatory to the secondary stages between 2000/2001 and 2012/2013(1)

Promotion from Grade 6 to Grade 7 Promotion from Grade 9 to Grade 10

Academic Education
year type Successful Promotion Successful Promotion
students rate students rate
Public 5,560 94.0 5,000 92.0
2000/2001 Private 3,284 99.2 2,365 98.3
Total 8,844 96.5 7,365 95.0
Public 6,156 98 6,017 96
Private 4,704 99.5 3,330 98.9
2005/2006
Total 10,860 98.8 9,347 97.5
Public 7,171 106.9 7,417 104
2011/2012 Private 6,769 95.2 5,156 82.5
Total 13,940 100.9 12,573 102.8
Public 7,203 105.4 7,410 100.7
2012/2013 Private 7,342 91.6 4,998 93.9
Total 14,545 98.0 12,408 97.8
‫ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ‬
(1) Source: SEC database – Office of Information Technology
Supreme Education Council 52

Table (18) and Figure (8) show that the number of students promoted to the preparatory stage is growing with time in
both public and private education. The reason behind that is the growing population and population movement in the
past years and the growing State interest in education as well as the adoption of the law on compulsory education and
the linking of the education level with the labor market job requirements (for higher education levels). Add to that the
rising and declining movement rates – maybe due to the structure of the population in Qatar – where the population
numbers increase and decrease as a result of the number of workers in Qatar and those applying for work in it or those
leaving as their contracts end.
When comparing the base year (2000/2001) to the target year (2012/2013), we note that the number of students
promoted from the primary stage in public education in 2000/2001 was 5,560 (94%) compared to 7,203 students (105.4%)
in 2012/2013. This highlights a 2.5% increase in the promotion rate in this stage of public education. Furthermore, by
comparing the base year 2000/2001 to the target year 2012/2013, we realize that students promoted from the primary
stage in the private education sector in 2000/2001 was 3,284 (99.2%) against 7,342 students (91.6%) in 2012/2013, thus
a growing number of promoted students in this stage of the private education sector of 4,058 students, i.e. a 10.4%
growth rate.

Figure (9): Promotion rate from the primary to the preparatory stages and from the preparatory to the
secondary stages, by type of education
Promotion rate

Public private total Public private total Public private total

Public private total Public private total

 53 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

As for the promotion rate from the preparatory to the secondary stage in both private and public education systems,
the number and percentage of students is increasing yearly. When comparing the base year 2000/2001 with the target
year 2012/2013, we notice that the number of students passing from the preparatory stage in public education during
the academic year 2000/2001 was 5,000 students with a 92% promotion rate against 7,410 students or 100.7% in
2012/2013. This proves that public schools have seen an increase by 2,410 students with a 4.0% growth rate in this
stage. When comparing the base year 2000/2001 with the target year 2012/2013, we notice that the promotion rate
from the preparatory stage in the private sector was 98.3% with 2,365 students versus 4,998 students and 93.9% in
2012/2013, thus a growth rate of 9.8% or 2,637 students in the private sector.

4-7 Percentage and number of qualified teachers in the primary stage

If the education process is student-centered, the teacher is one of its basic pillars. A teacher’s impact on the quality
of the education is considerable. It is known in pedagogy that a strong nexus exists between a teachers’ performance
and students’ academic levels. For that reason, the Supreme Education Council (SEC) focuses on teachers’ training and
qualification (on-going training and education) that would improve teachers’ levels in the teaching process and methods,
resulting in positive impact on students. Pupils-to-teacher ratio also plays a major role in students’ achievements; the
lower the PTR the better the teacher’s performance and students’ achievement. The following table highlights the
percentage of qualified teachers in the primary stage by type of education (public - private) for the period of 2000/2001
– 2012/2013.

Table (19): Number and percentage of academically qualified teachers of the primary stage for
2000/2001-2012/2013

Post- Post- % of teachers with one or

Academic year Tertiary
secondary graduate more university qualification

2000/2001 603 4,185 173 88%

2012/2013 821 8,343 1,513 92%

Table (19) and Figure (10) show that the number of primary school teachers with university and post-graduate
qualifications is increasing yearly, with the highest percentage being in 2012/2013 with 92%. Moreover, most of the
primary education teachers are holders of university qualifications.
Supreme Education Council 54

Figure (10): Number of qualified teachers by stage

No. of teachers in the Primary

Post-secondary Tertiary Post-graduate

4-8 Pupil/Teacher Ratio (PTR) in the different education stages:

The State of Qatar is keen to provide free public education for all. The State provides the necessary resources to ensure
better alignment between education and society needs. The State also stresses on quality education; it has allocated
a considerable share of government spending for education, thus contributing to the reduction of pupil/teacher ratio,
which is in the best interest of students and improves education attainment as students’ education achievement is an
important factor of PTR, the lower PTR the higher students’ achievement.
 55 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Table (20): PTR in primary education by type of education

during the period of 2000-2013(1)

Academic year Public Private Total

2000/2001 11 16 13

2005/2006 8.5 16 11

2011/2012 7 14 10

2012/2013 7 14 10

Results of table (20) reveal that PTR in public education is lower than that of the private education and that PTR in the
public sector differs from year to year if compared with private education. upon comparing the base year 2000/2001 with
the target year 2012/2013, we find that PTR in the primary stage declined from (13:1) to (10:1) with a decline of (4) units.
It is worth noting that the reason behind the increase and decrease of PTR in the three stages is the result of demolishing
a number of public schools and rebuilding them according to the latest educational designs, which increased student
density in some schools due to the redistribution of the students of the demolished schools to the remaining schools.
In general, table (20) proves that pupil to teacher ratio in Qatar is considered very good and acceptable pedagogically
as it does not exceed (13:1) in all academic years.

5) Public Spending on Primary, preparatory and Secondary Education

Qatar is keen to provide education for all and allocates the necessary resources for that so as to meet the needs of
society. The State focuses on the quality of education services provided to the society and allocates a general budget for
education expenditures in the different stages of general education, as well as parallel education and literacy programs,
based on the clauses of releasing employees’ salaries, services and secondary and primary facilities.

‫ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ‬
(1) Source: MoDPS – Qatar
(*) government spending does not include spending on private education
Supreme Education Council 56

Statistics show that the education budget constitutes a big portion of the general public spending, with about 10.8%
of public spending on education in 2012/2013 (see table (7) and amounted to 13% in 2014.
In general, over the years, there has been an increase in overall spending on public education from the overall public
expenditures. Moreover, every independent school (public) is allocated an independent budget that is managed and
used by the school administration. These budgets vary according to the different Stages, student population and the
school’s capacity to take in students with disabilities.
 57 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

6) Challenges:
Based on the section on goal 2, there are many challenges and problems in the report on EFA National Plan that
were overcome such as developing curricula whereby national standards follow international standards; developing
assessment tools based on such standards; participating in international examinations; avoiding overcrowded classes
and schools; and providing a safe and motivating learning environment by providing spaces for different activities and
various labs etc. However, despite giving Qatari teachers incentives to work in the teaching profession, there are still
some remaining challenges: Qatari men refuse to work in the teaching profession, students’ poor motivation to learn,
and the need for additional specialized training programs to increase teachers’ competence.

7) Conclusion:
Above-mentioned results reveal that (gross and net) enrolment rates have been on the rise year after year to reach
the levels set in Qatar’s EFA National Plan. Repetition rates are on the downfall year after year, while retention rate in the
Grade 5 and promotion rate to the preparatory and to the secondary stages are on the rise. This means that the internal
efficiency of the education system in Qatar is improving, similarly to the percentage of academically qualified teachers.
Pupil to teacher ratio is more than good and spending on education is growing, thus revealing the State’s interest in
education. A Fund for Education Spending has been established drawing on investments in Qatar’s gas resources, as
such, the education budget is not affected by economic changes.
Supreme Education Council 58
 59 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Goal 3: Life skills and lifelong learning

1) Ensuring that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable
access to appropriate learning and life-skills programs.

2) Most Important Objectives Set in the National Plan:

The National EFA Plan did not single out a special section for Goal 3 of Dakar - Life Skills and Lifelong Learning – but
it was integrated across the whole plan, in basic formal education, illiterate adult learning, and education for out-of-
school children and youth.

The objectives of the plan related to this Goal are:

• Ensure meeting learners’ needs through equal access to suitable education programs and acquiring necessary
skills.
• Ensure meeting the educational needs of all children and adults who are 15-17 years old through equal access to
suitable education programs and acquiring necessary life skills.
• Reaching equal opportunities in basic and continuing education for all adults 15-25 years of age.
• Developing school programs and curricula to meet the labor market needs and coincide with students’ age and
intellectual levels.
• Raising technical and vocational training curricula to higher levels while reducing redundancy, repetition and
mistakes.

3) National Policies and Legislations:

3-1 Objectives of Qatar Vision 2030:
• A world-class educational system that equips citizens to achieve their aspirations and to meet the needs of
Qatar’s society.
• A national network of formal and non-formal educational programs that equip Qatari children and youth with
the skills and motivation to contribute to society
• Well-developed, independent, self-managing and accountable educational institutions operating under
centrally-determined guidelines
• An effective system for funding scientific research shared by the public and private sectors and conducted in
cooperation with specialized international organizations and leading international research centers
• A significant international role in cultural and intellectual activity and scientific research
Supreme Education Council 60

3-2 National Development Strategy for Qatar 2011/2016:

The National Development Strategy for Qatar 2011/2016 includes a set of objectives related to Goal 3 which include:
• Elaborating a quality assurance system for the technical and vocational education and training (TVET) institutions
as well as developing and implementing relevant programs.
• Designing and implementing a TVET model for Qatar.
• Identifying and implementing standards for the National Qualifications Framework in consultation with all
stakeholders.
• Setting up and implementing a system of occupational standards suitable for the relevant professions.
• Elaborating and implementing a TVET requirements plan corresponding to labor market needs.
• Establishing a public and accessible career counseling system that encompasses TVET.
• Improving the image and perspective of TVET in Qatar.
• Limiting drop-out rates in TVET programs.

3-3 Agreements:

• The SEC signed an operating agreement with the Central Bank of Qatar to operate Qatar Independent Secondary
School for Banking Sciences and Business Management for Boys on June 2, 2010. The agreement included the role
and responsibilities of the SEC and the obligations and responsibilities of the operator as well as the operational
and implementation plans.
• An operating agreement was also signed on September 1, 2010between the SEC and Al-Mutamayizum Educational
Institution to operate the Religious Institute Independent Secondary Preparatory School for Boys. The agreement
covers school administration aspects, operational and executive plans, the role and responsibilities of the SEC as
well as the obligations of the operator and employment issues.
• The SEC signed an operating agreement with Qatar Petroleum to manage Qatar Independent Technical Secondary
School for Boys on July 20, 2012; It included aspects related to the school administration, operational and executive
plan, laws, policies and regulations of the SEC.
 61 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

4) Life Skills and Lifelong Education Indicators:

The following is a review of the main indicators achieved in this goal between 2001 and 2013:

4-1 Youth literacy rates (15-24 years):

Youth are one of the main pillars of a nation’s development. Given Qatar‘s belief in the importance of youth in the
sustainable development of the nation and in achieving Qatar Vision 2030, the State has given the youth special attention
as evident in its development plans. Education is one of the main fields of the State’s special attention; it equips them
with knowledge, skills and thinking patterns that would help them in their practical life.

Table (21): Youth literacy rate (15-24) in 2001-2008-2013

Category General Gender Equity

male rate Female rate
Year average Index
2001 96.9 97 97 1.00
2008 95.3 96.9 95.7 1.02
2013 98.8 99.3 99 1.01

The above table reveals that:

1) Literacy rate among the youth (male and female) is high in general; the main increase was in 2013 with 99%
compared with 97% in the base year (2001).
2) Female literacy rate is higher than the male’s as evident in the GEI; in other words, Qatari girls have good education
opportunities just like Qatari boys, without any discrimination.
3) The ongoing increase with both genders is due to a number of adopted procedures to control illiteracy, namely,
compulsory primary education, literacy programs and plans of spreading education nationwide.
Supreme Education Council 62

Figure (11): Youth literacy by gender

for 2000/2001-2012/2013

Male literacy female literacy general literacy rate

4-2 Net enrolment rate (NER) in the Secondary education:

The following table shows the net enrolment rate (NER) in the secondary stage between 2008/2009-2012/2013.

Table (22): NER in the Secondary stage

For 2008/2009 - 2012/2013(1)
Gender Total
Year
Male Female
2008/2009 82,5 91,7 86,8
2009/2010 86,1 90 87,1
2010/2011 86 88,8 87,4
2011/2012 85,7 86,1 85,9
2012/2013 84,7 90,9 87,7
We can notice in the above table an increase in NER in the secondary education (Grades 7-12) in all years except
2011/2012 which registered a slightly lower percentage.

‫ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ‬
(1) Source: Education and Training Sector Strategy, mid-term review – SEC & MoDPS – May 2014.
 63 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

4-3 GER in the secondary stage:

The following table shows Gross Enrolment Rate (GER) in secondary stage (Grades 7-12) by gender and Gender Equity
Index (GEI) in 2000/2001-2012/2013.

Table (23): GER in the secondary stage by gender and GEI

for 2000/2001-2012/2013

Year Male Female Total GEI

2000/2001 82.7 98.1 89.7 1.2
2010/2011 97 99.4 98.1 1
2011/2012 96.3 96.6 96.5 1
2012/2013 95 102.7 98.6 1.1

This table highlights a fluctuating GER in the secondary education (Grades 7-12) with an increase of almost 9 percentage
points in comparison with the base year 2000/2001. As for GEI, we can see that there are equal opportunities in secondary
education for both genders.

4-4 Distribution of secondary stage students by secondary education type:

In the following table we see the percentage of students enrolled in general and specialized secondary education
(religious institute, industrial techniques, banking science and business management) for the academic years 2007/2008-
2011/2012.
Supreme Education Council 64

Table (24): Distribution of Secondary education students in general and specialized education,
2007/2008 – 2011/2012

Year General education Specialized education

2007/2008 98 2
2008/2009 97,9 2,1
2009/2010 98,1 1,9
2010/2011 98,2 1,8
2011/2012 98,6 1,4

The above table reveals an increase in general education enrolment in comparison with a decline in specialized
education throughout the years, which is probably due to the society culture that looks at specialized education as
being inferior to academic education.
This situation required additional efforts in student counseling and guidance and parents’ awareness. The National
Education and Training Strategy has accounted for that and thus initiated a number of programs and projects, including:

• Project (4-1): Establish a TVET Supervisory Body.

• Project (4-2): Adopt a new Accreditation and Licensing Model.
• Project (4-3): National Qualifications Framework.
• Project (4-4): Establishing professional standards and an oversight body.
• Project (4-5): Elaborate a plan to create distinguished TVET programs and in alignement with the labor market.
• Project (4-6): Develop a plan for industrial partnerships to better develop TVET.
• Project (4-7): Develop a plan to raise awareness of TVET programs.
• Project (4-8): Efficient integration of TVET in career counseling.
 65 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

4-5 Education achievement of youth (15-24 years):

The following table shows the education achievement percentages of youth (male - female) for 2001-2010

Table (25): Education achievement percentages of the youth (male - female) for 2001-2010

Level of education achievement

Primary & before Secondary University
Year Gender
15-19 20-24 15-19 20-24 15-19 20-24
Male 36.1 23.2 63.9 71 - 5.8
2001 Female 25.3 13 74.7 75.6 - 11.5
Male 16.2 11.2 83 78.6 0.8 10.2
2010 Female 14.6 6.9 84.3 77.8 1.1 15.3

This table reflects the declining number of persons with low education levels and increasing number of persons with
higher education levels of both genders as the male percentage of holders of the secondary certificate in 2001 for the
age category (15-19 years) was 63.9%; it rose to 83% in 2010. We also note the increasing percentage for the age group
(20-24) to 78.6% in 2010.
The percentage of female students with secondary education of the age group (15-19 years) rose to 84.3% in 2010
with an increase of around 10 percentage points, and of about 2.5 percentage points for the age group (20-24).
We also note the growing number of university graduates of both age groups (male and female) with around 5
percentage points between the base year 2001 and 2010.
This is a result of the increasing awareness as to the importance of education attainment and the fact that the labor
market does not hire persons with less than a secondary education and in some instances a university degree is even
required.
Supreme Education Council 66

4-6 Total enrolment and GER and NER in TVET:

Table (26): Total enrolment and GER and NER in TVET in 2001 and 2013

Year Gender Total enrolment GER NER

2000/2001 Male 697 5.6 3.9
2005/2006 Male 584 3,9 3,4
2012/2013 Male 570 2.7 2,1

The previous table reflects the following:

A decline in number of males enrolling in TVET in 2013 compared to the base year 2001, followed by a declining GER
and NER for the following reasons:
• Most enrolled students choose academic secondary education and very few enroll in TVET.
• There are no technical and vocational schools for girls in Qatar.

Figure (12): GER & NER in TVET

for 2000/2001-2012/2013
%

Years
NER % GER %
 67 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

4-7 Cost per student in TVET:

Table (27): Cost per student in TVET

Schools

Academic year Qatar secondary Qatar for Banking

Religious institute
technical school sciences
2012/2013 101,512 112,782 57,504

The above table reveals the following:

• Increasing TVE cost per student due to inflation, increase of teachers’ salaries and increasing cost of school
buildings as well as development projects and programs and monthly student rewards.
• Based on the principle of community partnership and CSOs responsibility towards education, Qatar Petroleum
supports technical education financially and technically in line with the contract signed between SEC and QP;
Qatar’s central bank plays the same role in supporting Qatar’s School of Banking Sciences.

Additional indicators:

1- Vocational Education:
Qatar provides relatively limited opportunities for the Qatari youth especially girls looking for a non-academic option
at the end of compulsory education. There are only three public schools providing technical and vocational education
in the secondary stage that provide adequate qualifications for the labor market. These schools are: Qatar Independent
Technical Secondary School, Qatar Independent School for Banking Sciences and Business Management for Boys and the
Religious Institute. Although the number of enrolled students in these schools has increased from 472 to 949 students
between 2006/2007 and 2012/2013, their total number is still small, and there are future plans to provide TVE for girls.

Some of the main schools in this sector are:

Qatar Independent Technical School, established in 2004, is the only technical high school in Qatar that provides
boys 15 to 17 years with a three-year program, at the end of which they receive a diploma. In 2012/2013, the school had
447 students. The school adopts the framework of the “Australian rehabilitation of training and higher education” system.
Qatar Petroleum operates the school by virtue of an operating agreement signed with SEC; 30% of the studying time
is allotted to training activities in workshops and laboratories. Students receive additional training and industrial jobs
Supreme Education Council 68

in summer. Since 2009, the School students have become eligible to receive government scholarships and it provides
graduates with jobs at Qatar Petroleum if they wish so, and distinguished students can be enrolled in specific majors at
Qatar University.
In 2010/2011, SEC in partnership with Qatar’s Central Bank started operating Qatar’s School for Banking Sciences
and Business Management. The school provides training in business and finances as part of an educational curriculum
that prepares graduates to assume effective and meaningful roles in the financial sector. The Central Bank oversees
student training in coordination with many Qatari banks and will directly coordinate with computer skills and English
language training institutes to prepare students through a basic training in both fields. The number of enrolled students
in schools in 2012/2013 was 123 students.
As for the Religious Institute, it became an independent vocational school in 2010/2011. Since the beginning and
during that year, the institute sought to remain a religious and scientific edifice specialized in the Sharia and Arabic
Language, and a provider of high quality education in English and other experimental sciences. 200 to 300 students
enroll yearly, with 379 students registered in 2012/2013.
DeBakey High School for Health Professions is one of the most prominent new international private schools in Qatar.
It is a technical and vocational school for preparatory and secondary students wanting to follow health professions, for
both male and female students.

Post-Secondary (tertiary) Education:

Qatar has a number of post-secondary (tertiary) education institutions that provide formal education to high school
graduates and a professional diploma or certificate. There are four such institutions:
• College of the North Atlantic - Qatar: opened in 2002 for post-secondary education to provide a Canadian
curriculum and professional expertise within programs in four majors: Health Sciences, Information Technology,
Technical Engineering And Business Management.
• Community College – Qatar: opened in September 2010 with initial cohort of 300 full-time students and 150
part-time students. There are plans to expand gradually and the college offers technical programs and free art
programs available to students of all ages.
• Qatar Aeronautical College: founded in 1975 as a college for civil aviation for the Gulf countries in collaboration
with Qatar Airways, graduating 50 Qatari pilots annually. It also prepares students to enter the aviation industry
such as engineering, passenger service and airport and shipping operations.
• Ahmad bin Mohammed Military College: it collaborates with the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in the
UK. It offers a curriculum covering military sciences and studies. The first class graduated in 2001; until 2011, 6
 69 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

classes of military academy students had graduated, to enlist in the Armed Forces and the Ministry of Interior,
and other security forces with a baccalaureate degree.
There are several other post-secondary initiatives including the Professional Development Center and Qatar Finance
and Business Academy (Qatar Financial Center Authority) founded in 2009 and the Police Academy which was opened
in 2014

2- Social Sciences Standards include social, psychological and behavioral skills:

Social Science Standards aim at meeting students educational, psychological and social needs based on the nature of
said content area as individuals living and interacting with each other just as they interact with the resulting challenges
and problems in many aspects of life, which requires equipping students with a number of skills to help them overcome
such challenges, in addition to many social and behavioral skills that would help them live on this Earth as human
beings alongside their species, thus building a sense of responsibility and social role in the local or global community.
Among the objectives of Human Sciences:
• Equip students with knowledge and information that would help set the trends, values and basics
of sound thinking, in a functional way, that would allow them to benefit from them in guiding their
behavior and forge their personality as Qatari, Arab and Muslim citizens.
Supreme Education Council 70

• Help students acquire individual and collective work skills, assume responsibility, accomplish and excel.
• To believe in democracy and identify rights and obligations.
• Develop the tendency towards Arab solidarity as a historic inevitability and a necessity for the best
interest of all Arabs.
• Teach the economic, social and political problems of the Muslim world and their solutions.
• Appreciate moral values i.e. honesty, integrity, loyalty at work, sacrifice, cooperation, consolidate the
concept of democracy and freedom.
• Appreciate the importance of international peace and cooperation, reject discrimination and fight
colonization in all its forms.
• Affirm the right of all mankind to benefit of human heritage and present civilization as a property of
humanity as a whole.
Social Sciences include the strand of Citizenship; which develops social relations between the individual and his/her
society, the relationship between the individual and the State through rights and duties, and the relationship between
the individual and the land. The content area covers issues of health, society, culture and national holidays. For that
reason, citizenship standards - from kindergarten to Grade 6 (K-6) - focus on topics that develop the sense of citizenship
and consolidate the meaning of national identity. The content area also covers family issues and family components,
the main local occasions, the preservation of public and private property, traffic safety laws, civil defense, hygiene for a
better health, the concept of country and patriotism, volunteering and the preservation of the Arab and Muslim identity.
As for preparatory students, citizenship standards correspond to students’ age categories, in terms of the level of the
content area, information and data. Most of the topicsare related to the individual in the Qatari society, such as family,
youth, customs and traditions, as well as the ruling system, which is a topic that links the individual with his/her country.
In Grade 10, standards are related to issues of the State of Qatar – such as the ruling system, industrial production
and public finances. Upon setting the standards of Citizenship, precision, comprehensiveness and complete clarity of
concepts and terminology were considered thoroughly, in addition to numerous examples to reach desired objectives.

3- General Curriculum Framework for Values Education:

The General Curriculum Framework for Values Education focuses on values of understanding a person’s importance
as an individual and people’s relationship with one another, with the society and the environment in which we live. It
tackles physical, emotional and spiritual aspects of a student’s personality from an Islamic perspective.
The framework aims at deepening students’ understanding, motivating them to become personally and socially
responsible, enabling them to adopt a healthy lifestyle, build good relationships, care for others, be confident, help
 71 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

them think of and reflect on the different values to their practice applications. It includes many activities based on
values education through practice. It also covers teaching methods and assessment strategies. The framework focuses
on four essential values that would make a person feel proud and special, relationships with others, respecting and
caring for others, social and civic responsibility and respect of the cultural heritage and civilization of Qatar.

4- General Framework for Family Culture Curriculum:

A general framework for the curriculum of family culture was elaborated defining the concept and aim of family
culture education. It encompasses all the experiences and educational opportunities planned in the classroom or school
environment. This framework is closely linked to school planning and other content areas, especially social studies,
citizenship components and the
Curriculum for Values Education. Education experiences will promote students’ capacity and social welfare and
develop the feeling of self-worth and interaction with others. The aim is to prepare students to be more cultured and
skilled, armed with enough self-confidence to engage effectively in social relations and assume their responsibilities.
The framework helps promote learning and motivation and improve performance and achievement.
Supreme Education Council 72

The general framework for the curriculum of family culture covers many aspects related to family culture such as
moral, social, cultural, physical, spiritual, sexual and emotional aspects. It is divided into three strands: the educational
content, and teaching and assessment methods.

5- Providing and Utilizing Counseling Services to Youth at School and in Local Communities:
a- At school level:
- All schools in Qatar provide counseling services to students via the social worker in the school premises who
helps students solve their schooling and educational problems and helps students solve their psychological and
social problems.
- Under the initiative Education for a New Era, an Academic Counselor is appointed to guide and orient students and
provide academic and pedagogical support and consultation. He/she plays a prominent role in the secondary
stage in identifying the suitable tracks and disciplines in higher education.
b- At local community level, there are several semi-governmental institutions that provide counseling services to
the young including the Family Consulting Center that provides social and psychological counseling and advice to
the young, on an individual level.

Challenges:
Based on the above, many challenges persist, including:
- Young people reluctance to enroll in technical and vocational education.
- The lack of technical and vocational schools for girls.
 73 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Conclusion:
From all the above, we notice a keen interest in achieving the third EFA goal. That was evident in the rising literacy
levels of both males and females of designated age category, the increasing Gross and Net Enrolment Rates of secondary
education students and decreasing enrolment rates in technical and vocational education. The Education for a New
Era initiative aims at training and building a comprehensive personality, that is creative and innovative, with scientific
and critical thinking skills that can help build society and ensure sustainable development. Therefore, all independent
schools endeavor to provide such education and to include it in their objectives, visions, missions and programs.
The basic principles of the initiative promote life-skills, self-education and life-long education by building learners’
competencies and ability that are included in the National Curriculum Standards.
Supreme Education Council 74

Goal 4: Literacy and Adult Education

1) Achieving a 50 per cent improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for
women, and equitable access to basic and continuing education for all adults.

2) Literacy and Adult Education: a Component of Educational System in Qatar:

Qatar’s effort to achieve literacy and adult education began as the work on advancing education started. In 1954,
the first center for adult education and literacy was established and in 1956 adult education and literacy classes were
organized under the supervision of the sub education department assigned to supervise night schooling.
Only males were allowed to enroll in such schools until two centers for women were established in 1976 as several
others were successively opened. These centers adopted the daytime formal education curricula. That period witnessed
the establishment of the first night schooling.
In 1968, the Adult Literacy Department of the Social Service and Adult Education Administration was transformed into
an independent department (known as the Literacy and Adult Education Department). The same nomenclature stayed
in use until the administrative units of the Ministry of Education and the SEC were merged in 2008. The term was later
on replaced with parallel education which falls under the SEC Education Institute.

Parallel Education:

The educational system in Qatar provides opportunities for males and females wanting to complete their educational
journey but who are unable to do it in private or public day schools, as well as for those wanting to escape illiteracy
regardless of their age and nationality.
Parallel education includes (night schools or home schooling). Night schools include the primary stage which consists
of Cycle 1, which includes Level 1 and Level 2, and Cycle 2 which includes Level 3 and Level 4, then Grade 5 and Grade 6
. It also includes the preparatory and secondary stages; while homeschooling includes Grades 1 to 12 stages according
to the national curriculum standards. Thus, parallel education falls in line with the day schooling scale.
The admission policy in parallel education allows for the registration of students and learners who were unable to
continue their education in private or public day schools. It also provides opportunities for learners interested in literacy
regardless of their age and possibility of registration due to students’ status during the academic year (marriage for
females or work for males and females for example) or other circumstances as highlighted in relevant circulars.
 75 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

For Cycles 1 and 2 (literacy programs), the adopted education sources are those of the former Ministry, whereas from
the Grade 5 to Grade 12, the National Curriculum Standards are applied. Students’ examinations follow the assessment
policy approved by the SEC’s Evaluation Institute. For home schooled students, the education system from Grade 1 to
Grade 12 follows the National Curriculum Standards. This system allows the enrollment of students whose circumstances
prevent them from following their education in day schools and who do not meet the requirements of compulsory
education.
In parallel education, schooling schedule is set similarly to independent day schools (25 classes, 5 classes per day). The
academic year consists of two semesters, similar to day-schooling semesters. As for parallel education teachers, they
should hold a college degree in education and be specialized in the content area they teach. They should also have
teaching experience in their content area and must have practiced teaching in private or public schools that follow the
public curriculum, with full knowledge of the job requirements and duties.
Supreme Education Council 76

In order to facilitate and encourage female students to continue their education, the SEC provides school buses for
female students attending night schooling classes.

3) Policies and Legislations Related to Achieving this Goal:

The National EFA Plan singled out a special section to this goal to highlight illiteracy in Qatar with a quantitative and
qualitative analysis. On the quantitative side, statistical data related to the number of illiterates (males and females)
was showcased, while on the qualitative side the section presented the internal efficiency in terms of adult literacy
indicators, repetition rates of literacy and adult education students, and identification of relevant problems and causes.
It also addressed the status of the faculty, its problems and the underlying causes, school buildings,equipment and
financial cost.
The following are literacy goals as stated in the National EFA Plan:

- Raising awareness of all stakeholders as to the importance of adult education on a continuous basis.
- Develop and disseminate adult education schools throughout the country.
- Provide material and moral incentives to enroll in literacy centers.
- Use technology to spread literacy and adult education programs.
- Expand training for teachers and new administrative staff.
- Develop adult education curricula and methods.
- Develop the evaluation system of literacy and adult education centers.
On the other hand, the Education and Training Sector Strategy 2011- 2016 included several literacy programs and
projects.

4) Main Performance Indicators:

4-1 Performance indicators:

4-1-1 Adult literacy rate (15-24 years)

Qatar gives great importance to providing access to education to all the categories of society including adults. Literacy
rate is an important indicator to identify the percentage of adults who know how to read and write.
 77 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Table (28): Adult literacy rate (15 years and above)

for 2001-2013

Category /year Male Female Average GEI

2001 89.6 86.5 88.7 0.96

2005 93.6 87.5 90.6 0,95

2008
94.3 92.7 94 0.96

2012 96.9 95.8 96.7 0.99

2013 97.9 97.1 97.5 0.99

The above table shows male and female literacy rates are increasing on yearly basis; these are high rates and male
rates were higher than females in 2001, 2005, 2012 and 2013.
The table also reveals almost equal literacy rates between male and female learners and a noticeable improvement
and increase in literacy rates for both genders with no differences, which reflects Qatar’s keen interest in adult education
without any discrimination between males and females.
Supreme Education Council 78

Figure (13): Adult literacy rates (15 years+)

for 2000/2001-2012/2013

Years

Male literacy Female literacy General literacy rate

4-1-2 Youth literacy rate:

One of the key factors of the advancement of any nation is the youth. Given Qatar’s firm belief in the importance of
youth in the sustainable development of the state and their role in achieving Qatar Vision 2030, it has given them special
attention as reflected in its development plans. Education is one of the main fields of the State’s special attention; it
equips them with knowledge, skills and thinking patterns that would help them in their practical life.
Table (29) presents youth literacy rate (15-24 years) of 2001, 2005 and 2013.
 79 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Table (29): Youth literacy rate (15-24 years)

of 2001, 2005 and 2013

Category/ year Male Female Average GEI

2001 96.9 97 97 1.00

2005 99.6 98.4 99 0.99

2012 98.7 99.8 99.1 1.01

2013 99.1 100.3 99 1.01

The above table shows how Youth literacy rates of both genders are generally high, as clearly reflected in 2013 with a
general average of 99 % compared with 97% in the base year 2001.
We can also see that literacy rates are higher for females as clearly seen in the Gender Equity Index (GEI) which means
that Qatari girls have good educational opportunities without any discrimination.
This sustainable increase in male and female numbers is due to a number of adopted procedures to curb illiteracy
such as compulsory primary education, literacy programs and education expansion plans nationwide.

1-2 Additional performance indicators:

4-2-1 Illiteracy rates for the 15 and above age group for 2001-2013:
The following is a representation of adult illiteracy percentage (15 years and above) from 2001 through 2008, 2012
and 2013.
Supreme Education Council 80

Table (30): Illiteracy rates for the age group 15 and above
by gender for 2001-2013

Gender / Year Male Female Average

2001 10.4 13.5 11.3
2008 5.7 7.3 6
2012 3.1 4.2 3.3
2013 2.4 2.9 2.5
This table show that illiteracy rate in the base year (2001) was 11.3% and was decreasing. In 2008 it was 6%; in 2012
it dropped to 3.3% and then in 2013 to 2.5%, a testimony of Qatar’s focused interest and efforts in adult education and
literacy during the past years.
We also note a higher illiteracy rate among females that can be probably explained by the social customs of Qatar.
However, the gap between both rates is shrinking to almost inexistent in 2013 with 2.4% for males and 2.9% for females,
reflecting Qatari girls’ inclination towards and determination to be educated during the last years.
Figure (14): Illiteracy rates (15 years and above)
for 2000/2001 – 2012/2013
%

Years

Male illiteracy Female literacy General average

 81 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

4-2-2 Number of teachers in adult education and literacy schools (2001-2013)

Table (31): Number of teachers in adult education and literacy schools

by gender and stage (2001-2013)

Year Gender Primary Preparatory Secondary Total

Male 22 35 55 112
2001 Female 39 19 38 96
Total 61 54 93 208
Male 26 26 44 96
2008 Female 27 26 31 84
Total 53 52 75 180
Male 28 72 102 202
2013 Female 25 17 33 75
Total 53 89 135 277
The table shows the following:
• Number of teachers in adult education and literacy schools in 2001 was 208 versus 277 teachers in 2013.
• Number of teachers in primary stage in 2001 was 61 versus 53 in 2013.
• Number of teachers in preparatory stage in 2001 was 54 versus 89 in 2013.
• Number of teachers in secondary stage in 2001 was 93 versus135 in 2013.
• Secondary stage takes up a big number of parallel education teachers, with 93 teachers in 2001, i.e. 18.8% versus
135 teachers in 2013 or 48.7%, compared with 19.1% in the primary stage and 32.2% in the preparatory during
the same year.
We conclude that there is an ongoing rise in the number of teachers in adult education and literacy programs (parallel
education) which highlights the expansion of this type of education to include those of both gender willing to complete
their education or escape illiteracy.
Supreme Education Council 82

4-2-3 Number of learners in adult education and literacy program

Hereinafter is a presentation of the number of learners in adult education and literacy program by gender and level
for the years 2001-2008-2013.

Table (32): Number of learners’ adult education and literacy program

by gender, cycle and stage for 2001-2013

Academic
Gender Cycle 1 Cycle 2 Cycle 3 Cycle 4 Total Preparatory Secondary Total
year

Male 93 63 91 109 356 624 947 1927

2001/2000 Female 116 63 91 45 315 208 421 944
Total 209 126 182 154 671 832 1368 2871
Male 27 31 52 71 181 578 1043 1802
2008/2008 Female 55 68 61 49 233 169 264 666
Total 82 99 113 120 414 747 1307 2468
Male 61 38 67 80 246 891 1867 3004
2012/2013 Female 251 139 107 116 613 418 749 1780
Total 312 177 174 196 859 1309 2616 4784

The above table reveals the following:

The total number of learners in the base year (2001) was 2,871 with 1,927 male learners, i.e. 67.1% and 944 female
learners i.e. 32.9%.
In 2013, the total number of learners was 4,784 with 3,004 males or 62.8% and 1,780 females or 37.2%.
These statistics show that the number of male learners enrolled in adult education and literacy programs (parallel
education) is higher than female learners. This could be due to the structure of the Qatari population, with more males
than females as a result of the immigrating labor force that wishes to complete its education on the one hand, and
 83 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

on the other hand most girls wish to complete their education while males drop-out at some point to enter the labor
market and then re-enroll.
• Total number of primary education learners in 2001 was 671 learners versus 859 learners in 2013.
• Total number of preparatory stage learners in 2001 was 832 compared to 1,309 learners in 2013.
• Total number of secondary stage learners in 2001 was 1,368 compared to 2,616 learners in 2013.
We also note a yearly increase in the number of learners in parallel education; a higher enrolment rate in the secondary
stage in comparison with primary and preparatory stages; and also a higher percentage of male learners in the secondary
and preparatory stages compared to the primary.

4-2-4 Number of of Adult education and literacy classrooms:

Table (33): Adult education and literacy classrooms
by gender, cycle and stage (2001/2013)

Academic
Gender Cycle 1 Cycle 2 Cycle 3 Cycle 4 Total Preparatory Secondary Total
year
Male 2 2 2 2 8 16 21 45
2001/2000 Female 4 3 3 3 13 7 14 34
Total 6 5 5 5 21 23 35 79
Male 4 3 4 5 16 31 44 91
2013/2012 Female 6 3 4 3 16 10 18 44
Total 10 6 8 8 32 41 62 135
The table shows the following:

• The number of classrooms in adult education in 2001 was 79, 45 of which for males and 34 classrooms
for females. In primary education, there were 21 classrooms during that same year with 23 in the
preparatory and 35 in the secondary.
• Adult education classrooms in 2013 reached 135 classrooms, 91 for males and 44 for females. In the
primary stage of that year there were 32 classrooms, 41 in the preparatory and 62 in the secondary.
Supreme Education Council 84

From the aforementioned, there has been an increasing number of classrooms in this type of education. This reflects
Qatar’s focus on providing adult and youth education opportunities in order to absorb the growing population resulting
from the influx of labor force on the one hand, and the youth tendency to complete their education after entering the
labor market, on the other.

4-2-5 Number of Adult education and literacy schools:

Table (34): Number of adult education and literacy schools

by gender and stage (2001/2013)

Academic year Gender Primary Preparatory Secondary Total

Male 2 2 3 7
2000/ 2001 Female 3 2 2 7
Total 5 4 5 14
Male 3 7 8 18
2012/2013 Female 2 2 2 6
Total 5 9 10 24

Based on the last table we note that:

• There were 14 adult education schools in 2001, seven of which are for males and seven for females, and that the
number of schools in primary stage was five, four in preparatory and five in secondary.
• There were 24 adult education schools in 2013, 18 for males and six for females, with five schools in the primary
stage, nine in the preparatory and 10 in the secondary.
Accordingly, we conclude that there has been an increase in the number of schools in the preparatory and secondary
from 2001 and until 2012. This corresponds to the growing number of learners completing their education in said
stage. It also refers to Qatar’s concern with providing education access to youth and adults.
85 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015
Supreme Education Council 86

Figure (15): Number of adult education and literacy schools by gender

and cycle for 2000/2001- 2012/2013

No. of schools

1- Primary
2- Preparatory
Male Female Total Male Female Total 3- Secondary
4- Total number of schools
years

1 2 3 4

5) Challenges:
There are many challenges facing parallel education as a result of the demand on this type of education and of the
development of curricula, teaching methods and diversified learning sources, in addition to the specificities of our
modern era that is technological advancement.
Some of the main challenges are:
• Providing different learning sources aligned with the trend of diversifying the sources of knowledge.
• Training teachers of said education according to modern and suitable teaching methods.
• Providing services and facilities especially education techniques and technology.
 87 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

6) Conclusion:
Based on aforementioned data, male and female literacy rates among the youth and adults are increasing on yearly
basis. We are almost at a one hundred percent average with 97.5% in 2013, which means that illiteracy is almost
disappearing among the adults; it is almost totally nonexistent among the youth with a 99% literacy rate.
This becomes clear when analyzing illiteracy rates in Qatar. In 2001, it was at 11.3%and has dropped to 2.5% in 2013.
Gender Equity index (GEI) shows no gender discrimination, rather a positive discrimination in favor of females. There is
also a sustainable increase in the number of adult education and literacy teachers.
Supreme Education Council 88
 89 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Goal 5: Gender Equality in Literacy

1) Eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005, and achieving
gender equality in education by 2015 while ensuring full and equal opportunities for girls in
educational achievement and access to quality basic education.

2) Most Important Goals of the EFA National Plan:

The national plan did not include a special section for gender equality. However, it comprises certain gender equality
indicators throughout, starting with preschool, to basic education, adult education and finally youth education outside
the schooling system. Relevant goals targeted by the plan include:
• Continuing to provide equal access to education for males and females.
• Ensuring equal opportunities in basic education and continuing education for all adults including those aged
15 to 25 years, by expanding the admission of adults in other education programs, schools and centers, as well
as allowing women in the future to receive gender-sensitive life-skills training.
• Providing broader opportunities for Qatari women through technical and vocational training (TVET) in disciplines
that are gender-sensitive and in line with the society’s needs.

3) National Policies and Legislations:

The State of Qatar has been keen on ensuring gender equality and parity (between male and female) in school
enrollment. All State legislations and laws at all levels have been rid of all forms of gender-based discrimination1, which
is apparent through:

 The constitution of Qatar:

Qatar has been strongly committed to the principle of gender equality. The constitution of Qatar stipulates in:
• Article 18 that “Justice, benevolence, freedom, equality and high moral standards are core values of the Qatari society.”
• Article 25 that “Education is one of the basic pillars of social progress. The State shall ensure, foster and promote
education.”
• Article 34 that “Citizens shall be equal in terms of public rights and duties.”

(1) There are no ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities or indigenous peoples in the State of Qatar. Almost all residents of Qatar belong to one ethnic group, and the ethnic, religious and
linguistic minorities in the State are migrant workers with temporary residence. They enjoy their full rights during their stay in the State, including the right to education in their mother
tongue.
Supreme Education Council 90

• Article 35 that “All persons are equal before the Law and there shall be no discrimination whatsoever on grounds of
gender, race, language or religion.”
• Article 49 that “All citizens have the right to education, and the State shall endeavor to make general education
compulsory and free of charge in accordance with the applicable laws and regulations of the State.”
 Qatar Vision 2030 goals:
• Increased opportunities and vocational support for Qatari women
 Emiri decree no. 25 of September 2001 with regard to compulsory education for all children in the State of Qatar, from
primary to preparatory school or until the age of 18, depending on which comes first.
 Emiri decree no. 28 of 2009, which confirms Qatar’s adherence to the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of
Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).

4) Gender Parity and Equality Indicators in Education:

4-1 Female rates out of gross enrollment rates by level for 2000/2001 – 2005/2006 – 2011/2012.
The law on compulsory education in the State of Qatar includes the right to education for both genders, as a pillar of
a society’s progress and development. Qatar has been keen on offering distinguished educational services as well as
expanding the number of public schools, and encouraging the establishment of private schools, especially outstanding
ones. In 2005, Qatar spent 19.6% of public expenditures on education (a higher percentage than the global rate in the
relevant field).
The major achievements in the field of education at all stages led to an increase in enrollment rates at all educational
stages, from the primary to the tertiary level. The number of students from both genders rose from 83,979 in the
academic year 1989/1990 to 164,362 in the academic year 2008/2009, with a 4% annual growth rate. In 2010/2011, the
number of students reached 197,255. The percentage of private school students was 54%, compared to 46% for public
schools. The percentage of female students out of the total number of students in private and public schools reached
48.8%.
The following table defines the percentage of females in gross enrollment in EFA academic levels.
 91 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Table 35: Percentage of females in gross enrollment by educational level

Level
Academic Year
Pre-primary Primary Preparatory Secondary
2000/2001 47% 49% 49% 52%
2005/2006 49% 49% 49% 50%
2010/2011 49% 49% 49% 49%
2011/2012 48% 49% 49% 49%

This table illustrates the following:

- The State of Qatar has achieved gender equality in all educational stages, which proves that it is giving equal
interest to both males and females, without discrimination.
- In preschool, the percentage of females is almost half of the total number of children, despite the fact that
this level is not compulsory. This reflects the attention given to female education in this level. That is because
education access to early childhood programs is available to both genders.
- In the primary and preparatory stages, the percentage is stable at 49%, which promotes gender equity. This
could be attributed to compulsory education in these two stages.
- In the secondary stage, a drop in female rates is noted compared to males, which is likely due to the fact that
the education system in the State of Qatar does not allow married women to complete their studies in daytime
schools. They are then transferred to parallel education or homeschooling.

4-2 Percentage of female teachers out of the total number of primary, preparatory and secondary
teachers:
Expanding the number of schools, classrooms and male and female students in Qatar was coupled with an increase
in the number and percentage of faculty members. Female teachers constitute the largest percentage of the overall
faculty members for the primary, preparatory and secondary stages. The following table shows the percentage of female
teachers by educational stage, compared to the overall number of male and female teachers.
Supreme Education Council 92

Table 36: Percentage of female teachers by educational level

Level
Academic Year
Pre-primary Primary Preparatory Secondary
2000/2001 99 82 56 54
2005/2006 100 83 56 56
2010/2011 96 92 57 53
2011/2012 99 96 56 54

This table illustrates the following:

1) The percentage of female teachers in the pre-primary level ranges between 97-100% which is normal for this
level, where teaching is mostly handled by females.
2) In primary stage, we see a notable rise in the number of female teachers, since they constitute 82% at the base
year (2000/2001). The percentage increased in 2011/2012 to 90%. The increase of female teachers at this stage
can be attributed to the general trend towards feminization in most boys’ primary schools.
3) In preparatory and secondary stages, the percentage ranges between 53-57%, which shows that female teachers
represent more than half of teachers. That is because some male private schools in the aforementioned stages
have mostly female teachers.
 93 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Figure (16): Percentage of female teachers by educational level

for 2000/2001 – 2011/2012

Pre-primary primary preparatory secondary

4-3 Percentage of female school principals for all general education stages:
Qatari women in public employment must comply with the 1967 law no. 9 and the amending laws thereof. Through
this legislation, they enjoy equal access (to men) to equal pay for work of equal value, without discrimination based on
gender or color. The same principles apply to appointment and promotion, as well as the extension of employment
benefits and social security.
The following table illustrates the percentage of female directors in each level of public education.
Supreme Education Council 94

Table 37: Percentage of female directors in each level of public education

Level

Academic Year Primary Preparatory Secondary

2000/2001 72% 52% 48%

2005/2006 82% 44% 48%

2010/2011 69% 48% 45%

2011/2012 67% 46% 44%

This table illustrates the following:

1) In the primary stage, there is an increase in the percentage of females compared to males. This can be attributed
to the feminization of the administrative and teaching staff in boys’ primary schools.
2) In the preparatory and secondary stages, the percentage is more equal from a gender perspective in school
administrations, due to the similar numbers of schools for boys and schools for girls in these two stages.

4-4 Equal opportunities for both genders:

The State of Qatar has confirmed its full commitment to promoting gender equality and empowering women, as
one of the major requirements of sustainable development in the 2000 Millennium Summit. The State also renewed its
commitments made in the 2002 Monterey Conference on Recent Trends in Financing for Development, by confirming
gender equality. For the State, these are vital elements of development, and a means for achieving the Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs). The State also considers education as one of the best means for achieving gender equality,
and has managed to ensure equal opportunities and reduce the gender gap in all stages of public education, as a result
of the ambitious initiative for developing public education. The following table shows all achievements in terms of
equality in education, by gender equality indices.
 95 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Table 38: Equal educational opportunities by educational level for 2000-2012

Gender Equality Index 2000 2006 2012

GER in ECCE 0.96 1 0.98
GER in primary 1.21 1.06 1
GER in preparatory 1.19 1.15 1.05
GER in secondary 1.18 1.35 1.12
GER in preparatory and secondary 1.19 1.24 1.08
NER in primary 1.23 1.08 1
NER in preparatory 1.28 1.4 1.13
NER in secondary 1.33 1.4 1.13
NER in preparatory and secondary 1.21 1.25 1.07
Youth literacy rate (15-24) 1 1.12 1.01
Adult literacy rate (15 years +) 0.96 1.04 0.99

This table illustrates the following:

The value of gender equality index is (1), which shows parity between females and males. Thus, the State of Qatar has
achieved gender equality in 10 indicators, and is close to achieving that goal in literacy rate for persons aged 15 and
above. The State has also achieved equality in ECCE gross enrollment rate (GER) in public kindergartens. However, these
rates vary in the private sector, due to demographic growth and the subsequent demographical gender variation.

Conclusion:
The previous presentation of all goal indicators shows the similarity of relevant rates and gender equality in education.
Where certain indicators show a remarkably higher number of female teachers in the primary stage, that is due to the
feminization policy in boys’ schools. This is one of the accomplished goals in the State of Qatar and does not require
promotion, since all relevant policies, legislations and laws guarantee gender equality and provide equal educational
opportunities for all citizens.
Supreme Education Council 96
 97 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Part III
Education Quality
Supreme Education Council 98
 99 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Part III
Goal 6: Education Quality
1) Improving all qualitative aspects of education and ensuring excellence for all, so that
all students achieve clear and tangible learning outcomes, especially in reading, writing,
numeracy and basic life skills.
A full chapter has been dedicated to this part due to its importance and the fact that it encompasses many educational
aspects related to school environment, students, teachers, school leaderships, services, facilities, school curricula,
educational programs and others. The following is a presentation of the basic and additional indicators and the quality
programs which promote the quality of education.

2) National policies and legislations:

2-1 Qatar Vision 2030:

In the pillar of Human Development: the aspect of “Educated Population”, Qatar Vision has focused on a series of goals
oriented towards the quality of education, which are:
- A world-class educational system that equips citizens to achieve their aspirations and to meet the needs
of Qatar’s society.
- Well-developed, independent, self-managing and accountable educational institutions operating under
centrally-determined guidelines
2-2 Education and Training Strategy 2011/2016:
The first National Development Strategy in Qatar for 2011-2016 was built based on three main principles the first
being quality, which requires international competitiveness and good learning outcome by focusing on excellence
in all educational inputs and outputs, including school infrastructure, teachers, leadership and curricula. This strategy
was translated into a series of action plans and executive programs which targeted the quality of education and the
improvement of educational outcome.
The attention given to education quality was apparent though several factors, the most important of which are:
• Developing curricula and textbooks in accordance with national and international standards.
• Promoting professional development of all school staff, both teachers or administrators.
• Improving school environment and developing school buildings while meeting all relevant safety
and security requirements, and equipping buildings with all necessary facilities such as labs, gyms,
Supreme Education Council 100

playgrounds, sanitation facilities, etc.

• Improving and monitoring school performance through periodic (triennial) review of independent
schools, and School Accreditation for private schools.
• Participating in international examinations, notably PISA, TIMSS and PIRLS in order to compare the
performance of Qatari students with that of their counterparts in other countries, and subsequently
assess the performance level of Qatari students in mathematics, science, and reading.
• Comparing student performance in all content areas in Grades 4 through 12, by means of national
examinations.
• Integrating technology in education through e-Learning and e-Schoolbag.
• Motivating students through awards and competitions, notably the Education Excellence Day (EED)
Award, under the auspices of His Highness Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the Emir of Qatar.
• Attracting a group of outstanding schools from a number of countries, such as DeBakey High School,
the London School, and others.
Qatar has made remarkable progress in the development and improvement of education, as well as achieving EFA
goals. One of the biggest initiatives is that of independent schools that is built on four main pillars: Autonomy, Variety,
Accountability and Choice, the law on compulsory and free education as of Grade 1 and until the end of the Preparatory
stage or upon reaching the age of 18, and the confirmation of the Qatari constitution articles 25 and 49 regarding the
importance of education, guaranteeing universal education, providing equal access to education for both genders and
developing educational programs at the basic and secondary levels, in addition to parallel education (night school and
homeschooling).

3) Key Indicators:
Below is a presentation of educational indicators showing a rise in the quality of the educational system in the State
of Qatar.
3-1 Numbers and percentages of teachers by qualification and educational level

- Kindergartens:
The following table shows teacher numbers and percentages in kindergarten by educational qualification and gender
for 2000/2001 – 2012/2013.
 101 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Table 39: Number and percentage of teachers in kindergarten by qualification and gender for
2000/2001 – 2012/2013

Post-Secondary Tertiary Postgraduate

Academic Year Gender Total
Number % Number % Number %
Male 2 0.37 5 0.92 1 0.18 8
2000/2001
Female 179 33.2 329 61 23 4.26 531
Male 13 0.79 22 1.34 18 1.1 53
2010/2011
Female 604 36.91 832 50.85 147 8.98 1,583
Male 1 0.047 3 0.14 7 0.33 11
2011/2012
Female 733 34.98 1155 55.13 185 8.83 2,089
Male - - 15 0.69 14 0.65 29
2012/2013
Female 544 25.26 1360 63.16 220 10.21 2,124

This table illustrates the following:

- Women constitute the overwhelming majority of faculty members in all the years, since they represent 98.8% in
2000/2001 and 98.55% in 2012/2013 due to children’s age group and the strong bond they share with women
from a psychological standpoint.
- Around half of all male and female kindergarten teachers hold college degrees.
- The percentage of female teachers with less than college qualifications dropped in 2012/2013 to 25.36%
compared to previous years, especially the base year 2000/2001, which proves the State’s keenness on appointing
competent and qualified teachers and requiring that they attend educational programs which promote their
education levels, such as the Diploma Program in Early Childhood Education.

- Primary Stage:
The following table shows the number and percentage of primary school teachers by educational qualification and
gender for 2000/2001 – 2012/2013.
Supreme Education Council 102

Table 40: Number and percentage of primary school teachers by educational qualification and gender for
2000/2001 – 2012/2013

Post-Secondary Tertiary Postgraduate

Academic Year Gender Total
Number % Number % Number %
Male 111 12.5 711 80.3 64 7.2 886
2000/2001
Female 492 12 3,474 85.3 109 2.7 4,075
Male 42 6 470 69 169 25 681
2010/2011
Female 1,426 18.4 5,505 71.1 809 10.5 7,740
Male 95 9 456 54 387 37 1,015
2011/2012
Female 1,775 18.6 6,590 69 1,182 12.4 9,547
Male 88 6.5 870 63.5 410 30 1,368
2012/2013
Female 733 8 7,464 80.2 1,103 11.8 9,300

This table illustrates the following:

- Women constitute the vast majority of faculty members in all the years.
- More than half of male and female primary school teachers hold college degrees.
- The percentage of female teachers with less than college qualifications dropped in 2012/2013 to 25.36%
compared to previous years especially the base year 2000/2001, which proves the State’s keenness on appointing
competent and qualified individuals to take on a teaching profession and preparing supporting education
programs to upgrade their education levels.

- Preparatory Stage:
The following table shows the number and percentage of preparatory school teachers by educational qualification
and gender for 2000/2001 – 2012/2013.
 103 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Table 41: Number and percentage of preparatory school teachers by educational qualification and gender
for 2000/2001 – 2012/2013

Academic Post-Secondary Tertiary Postgraduate

Gender Total
Year Number % Number % Number %
Male 31 3.6 759 87.6 76 8.8 866
2000/2001
Female 4 0.4 1056 94.6 56 5 1116
Male 43 2.3 1328 70 527 27.7 1898
2010/2011
Female 174 7 1745 70.7 550 22.3 2469
Male 36 2 1260 71 480 27 1776
2011/2012
Female 170 7.3 1638 73 446 19.7 2254
Male 59 3 1474 77 381 20 1914
2012/2013
Female 159 7 1746 78 338 15 2243

This table shows the following:

- Female teachers constitute around twice the number of males in terms of faculty members in most years.
- More than 70% of male and female preparatory school teachers hold college degrees.
- The percentage of teachers with less than college qualifications increased in 2012/2013 to 5% compared to
previous years and to the base year 2000/2001.
- The percentage of male teachers with postgraduate degrees increased in 2012/2013.

- Secondary Stage:
The following table shows the number and percentage of secondary school teachers by educational qualification and
gender for 2000/2001 – 2012/2013.
Supreme Education Council 104

Table 42: Number and percentage of secondary school teachers by educational qualification and gender
for 2000/2001 – 2012/2013

Post-Secondary Tertiary Postgraduate

Academic Year Gender Total
Number % Number % Number %
Males 22 2 928 80.2 206 17.8 1156
2000/2001
Females 1 0.07 1287 93.6 87 6.3 1375
Males 27 2 982 74 321 24 1330
2010/2011
Females 87 5.7 1214 80.3 210 14 1511
Males 35 2 1170 66 575 32 1780
2011/2012
Females 197 9.3 1480 71 412 19.7 2089
Males 87 4.7 1406 77 335 18.3 1828
2012/2013
Females 217 10 1637 76 293 14 2147

This table shows the following:

- The number of male and female teachers are very similar throughout the years, with a slight difference in favor
of females.
- More than 70% of male and female secondary school teachers hold college degrees.
- The percentage of female teachers with less than college qualifications increased in 2012/2013 to 10% compared
to previous years and the base year 2000/2001.
- The percentage of teachers with postgraduate degrees increased in 2012/2013.

3-2 Pupil Teacher Ratio (PTR) by Educational Stage:

The following table illustrates pupil teacher ratio in all educational stages for 2000/2001 – 2012/2013.
 105 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Table 43: Pupil teacher ratio in all educational levels for 2000/2001 – 2012/2013

Level Kindergarten Primary Preparatory Secondary

Year Public Private Total Public Private Total Public Private Total Public Private Total

2000/2001 - 17 17 11 16 13 12 19 13 8 12 9
2005/2006 4 17 12 8.5 16 11 10 11.5 10 9 7 9
2010/2011 10 19 16 9 14 11 10 8 9 11 16 12
2011/2012 8 18 14.5 7 14.5 10 8.5 13 10 9 10.5 9
2012/2013 11 17.5 15 7 14 10 85 13 10 8.5 11 9

The above table reflects the following:

- PTR fluctuates through the years in public and private kindergartens.
- PTR in public education is lower than it in private education.
- Upon comparing the base year 2000/2001 to 2012/2013, we find that the overall ratio dropped to (15:1).
- PTR at the primary stage decreased over the years, reaching (11:1) in 2000/2001 and dropping to (7:1) in
2012/2013. The same goes for private education, where it dropped from (16:1) to (14:1).
- Upon comparing the base year 2000/2001 to 2012/2013, we find a decrease in PTR from (13:1) to (10:1) with a
drop of (3).
- PTR at the preparatory stage dropped in both private and public education. In public education, it dropped from
(12:1) in the base year to (8.5:1) in 2012/2013. In private education, it dropped from (19:1) to (10:1). Thus, the
drop in private schools is higher than it in public schools (9).
- Upon comparing the base year 2000/2001 to 2012/2013, we find a 3-point drop in PTR at the preparatory stage
from (13:1) to (10:1).
- PTR at the secondary stage is fluctuating in private and public education over the years.
- Upon comparing the base year 2000/2001 to 2012/2013, we find that PTR stabilized at (9:1).
- This rise in PTR at all three stages in private schools is attributed to the large number of students, compared to
the low number of teachers.
Supreme Education Council 106

- PTR in Qatar is good and acceptable from an educational standpoint, since it didn’t exceed (13:1) at the different
educational stages, except in kindergarten where it reached (15:1), which is also an acceptable rate.

Figure (17): PTR by educational level for 2000/2001 – 2012/2013

Kindergarten Primary Preparatory Secondary

3-3 Pupil /Classroom Ratio (PCR) by Educational Level:

This is one of the qualitative indicators, which is why it garnered the interest of the Supreme Education Council (SEC).
In 2005, the Education Institute adopted a policy stipulating that the number of students in a single classroom should
not exceed 25, especially at the early levels of education, such as Grade 1 and Grade 2. This number can slightly increase
in highly populated regions, and the number of students in a single classroom at other educational grades ranges
from 25 to 29. There has also been an increase in school and classroom construction in order to reduce the number of
students in classrooms.
The following table shows PCR by educational stage.
 107 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Table 44: PCR by educational stage for 2000/2001 – 2012/2013

Level
Kindergarten Primary Preparatory Secondary
Year
2000/2001 21.5 26 28 24
2005/2006 24 25 26 25
2011/2012 21 23.5 23 24
2012/2013 22 24.5 24 23

This table illustrates the following:

- The average number of students in a classroom at all stages did not exceed 28 during the plan period. This
average was at the base year, at the preparatory stage.
- The average number of students in a classroom in kindergartens fluctuates between 21 and 24, which is an
adequate range.
- The number of students in a classroom at the primary stage decreased over the years, dropping from 26 at the
base year 2000/2001 to 24.5 in 2012/2013.
- As for the preparatory stage, a 4-student decrease in the average number of students in a single classroom is
noted over the years, from 2000/2001 to 2012/2013.
- At the secondary stage, the number of students in a classroom remains consistent over the year without
exceeding 25, dropping by 1 student from the base year 2000/2001 to the year 2012/2013.
- We note that the State has stressed the importance of not exceeding the approved number of students per
class. To that end, there are annual plans for the construction and expansion of new schools in all regions, as well
as improving the school environment which would promote students’ academic performance.

Moreover, the outputs of the public education outcome of the Education and Training Strategy 2011-2016 included
(1) the continuous work for the development of an advanced educational policy which goes in line with the State efforts
to develop human resources, and a special outcome related to school expansion, a plan to develop the infrastructure to
ensure the capacity to absorb all students.
Supreme Education Council 108

3-4 Textbook / Pupil Ratio (TPR) by Educational Stage:

Since the early phases of the education system, Qatar has sought to provide free textbooks to all students, as well
as all required school supplies in public education in terms of notebooks, learning materials and tools. The SEC also
sought to continuously develop textbooks in accordance with the State needs, and thus keep up with the latest global
developments. National Curriculum Standards were developed, and accordingly, student textbooks and teacher guides
were developed by publishing houses with international expertise in school curricula. They were then reviewed and
piloted by a local team.
During the last two years, the SEC began to implement the e-Schoolbag project for 40 public schools as a first stage.
This project included the distribution of free tablets including e-textbooks. The project will be mainstreamed to the
remaining schools in 2014/2015.
The following table shows TPR by educational stage.

Table 45: TPR by educational stage

Item Kindergarten Primary Preparatory Secondary

All subjects 1:1 1:1 1:1 1:1

3-5 Current spending percentage on textbooks and material out of public expenditures.
The following table shows public expenditures on textbooks and educational materials.

Table 46: Percentage of spending on textbooks and educational materials of public expenditures
for 2011/2012 – 2012/2013
Expenditures in Qatari Riyals (QR)
Year Percentage
Textbooks Educational Materials
2012/2011 15,687,53 7,009,514 3.96%
2011/2012 22,345,472 9,754,235 2.5%
2012/2013 23,069,165 10,936,911 1.29%
 109 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

This This table illustrates that the amount of spending on educational material and textbooks increased remarkably
over the years, from QR 22,696,667 in 2010/2011 to QR 34,006,076 in 2012/2013.

3-6 Teacher’s remuneration:

The SEC has been keen on recruiting qualified and competent teachers, in accordance with the aspirations and
methodologies of the State’s wise leadership, and in the service of Qatar Vision 2030, achieving the National Education
and Training Strategy. Thus, the SEC sought to improve teachers’ salaries and incentives considering the heavy burden
they carry.
The average teacher’s yearly salary reached US$102,000.
Teachers’ salaries percentage of public expenditures on education are shown in the below table:

Table 47: Percentage of teachers’ salaries of public expenditures on education

Year Teacher Salary Percentage

2005/2006 64.50
2010/2011 23.49
2011/2012 15.52
2012/2013 13.16

3-7 Percentage of Schools with Safe Drinking Water:

Safe drinking water is available in all schools, in addition to refrigerators for cooling drinking water during the summer.
These refrigerators are regularly examined to ensure proper functioning and cleanliness.

3-8 Percentage of Schools with Sanitation Facilities:

All State schools have been designed according to the latest international school standards. They include sanitation
systems in order to ensure that the school environment is clean and safe for student. The number of toilets in schools
has been set to meet the number of students and school accommodation capacity. There are also sanitation facilities for
students with disabilities in integration schools, which are compatible with students’ disabilities.
Additionally, there are special sanitation facilities for both teaching and administrative staff in the school.
Supreme Education Council 110

3-9 School Life Expectancy:

School Life Expectancy represents the number of years for which a child is expected to remain in school or university,
including years of repetition. It also represents gross enrollment rates by age in primary, secondary, post-secondary and
tertiary education.
The following table shows the average school life expectancy in the State of Qatar between 2001 and 2005.

Table 48: Average school life expectancy in the State of Qatar1

Gender
Male Female Total
Year
2001 11.2 13.5 12.2
2002 12.3 13.6 12.8
2003 13.4 14 13.6
2004 14 13.9 13.8
2005 13.9 14 13.9

This table shows that the average school life expectancy has increased by 1.7 years, from 12.2 in 2001 to 13.9 in 2005,
knowing that this average in most European and developed countries is around 16 years. This average is expected to
rise in the coming years in Qatar.

3-10 Percentage of teachers having completed required teaching hours by educational level
The SEC has set several standards regarding the required number of teaching hours, which take into consideration
the educational level and follow the international best practices in this field, in order to ensure qualitative teaching and
learning processes. In the academic year 2011/2012, the Education Institute issued a circular stating that a teacher’s
hours should be no less than 12 and no more than 16. In the academic year 2014/2015, this number could range from
10 to 14 periods every week at the early education level (Grade 1 and Grade 2), while it could range between 12 and 14
periods in higher grades, in order to ensure quality teaching and learning. This can be attributed to good preplanning
which provides the necessary number of teachers at the right time, and adequate risk management policies which
ensure the completion of approved teaching hours. In addition to the ease of access to school locations, 100% of teachers
(1) Those are the currently available indicators, provided by relevant international organizations, where the average is calculate in a specific, precise and mathematical way.
 111 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

have completed the required teaching hours. This shows good practice in terms of reviewing teaching hours assigned
to teachers, as well as attempting to reduce said hours in order to focus teachers’ efforts on students’ education and
learning processes and thus ensure their development and promote their academic achievement.

4) Programs and Initiatives:

4-1 Independent Schools:

With the advent of the 21st century, the pace of educational development has accelerated remarkably, especially after
declaring the establishment of the Supreme Education Council under the Emiri Decree no. 37 of 2002, as the supreme
authority tasked with determining the State’s educational policy, developing educational strategies and supervising
their implementation.
In 2004, under the guidance of His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani – the Father Emir – the Qatari
government launched the public education development initiative in the State of Qatar under the slogan “Education for
a New Era”, in order to keep up with the requirements of comprehensive and sustainable development in the country.
This initiative aims at promoting the State’s national principles, values and priorities, and making classrooms an
exciting space for education, as well as encouraging students to fully capitalize on their potential and talents, engaging
parents in the educational process while meeting their aspirations, and ensuring the graduation of a young qualified
generation for universities and the labor market locally and internationally.
The “Education for a New Era” initiative seeks to encourage innovation and improving student performance through
school autonomy. Thus, this initiative gives State-funded independent schools the freedom to choose their own
pedagogical philosophies and teaching methods, as long as they comply with the SEC’s policies and regulations.
The “Education for a New Era” initiative is based on four main principles:
- Autonomy: Helps encourage innovation and improve student performance through school autonomy.
State-funded independent schools will have the freedom to choose their own pedagogical philosophies and
teaching methods.
- Accountability: Puts schools in a position of responsibility, in order to measure and evaluate the student’s
learning process and development, as well as the school’s performance progress.
- Variety: Provides various educational alternatives while preserving fixed standards for performance levels.
- Choice: Provide parents with the right of selection and participation according to their desires, potential and
abilities.
Supreme Education Council 112

The State established independent schools which are funded by the State and have the freedom to adopt their own
vision, message, and objectives, while abiding by the conditions set in the contract with the SEC.
The philosophy of independent schools which are considered the ideal schools in Qatar is founded on allowing schools
to manage their own affairs in line with the principle of autonomy. The school chooses teachers, teaching methods,
assessment methods and school programs and activities. The school also determines the school system and provides
assistance and educational sources. Moreover, these schools allow parents to participate in their management through
boards of trustees and parents councils. The school’s organizational structure includes the board of trustees, school
principal, vice principals and representatives of parents councils.
The board of trustees is considered one of the regulation elements required in every independent school. Its role
consists of providing advice, representing parents and society, and helping the school with quality control.

4-2 Curriculum and Textbook Development:

4-2-1 Curriculum Standards:

The education development initiative has developed curriculum standards. The program started upon setting the
standards for four content areas : Arabic Language, English Language, Mathematics And Science, for all grades. Standards
were then set for two additional content areas: Islamic Studies and Social Studies. These standards represent the goals
which learners are required to achieve. They are in line with international expectations, with regard to what the student
must learn. They also demonstrate the skills which a learner must acquire, master and competently employ at the end
of each grade throughout K-12.
The standards for these content areas were set based on internationally recognized standards by a local team and
international think tanks. Curriculum standards promote and reaffirm many positive concepts in independent schools
such as differentiation among students and focusing on student-centered educational process, as well as encouraging
research, analysis and critical and innovative thinking. These standards also help teachers with the teaching process, by
benefiting from the situations and information derived from the practical life. Additionally, these standards encompass
equal opportunities for students wanting to enroll in international outstanding universities, which facilitates the positive
differentiation of skills, their development and promotions, by identifying outstanding students and developing their
abilities.
 113 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

4-2-2 Frameworks for New Curricula:

- New curriculum frameworks were developed in order to help independent schools prepare lessons in
three content areas: Physical Education, Family Education and Values Education.
- These frameworks were implemented at the start of the academic year 2008/2009 in independent schools.
- The Physical Education curriculum framework helps develop healthy and active children who learn the
basis of proper living. The curriculum comprises a large series of extracurricular activities such as football
matches, basketball, volleyball, and sports undertaken after the end of the school day.
- Family Education is aimed at teaching students how to deal with their family members and establish
proper and sound relationships with members of their society, as well as instilling confidence in them and
encouraging them to adopt positive attitudes.
- Values Education is aimed at promoting educational values within schools, while stressing the importance
of self-esteem and social responsibility, and respecting past, present and future Qatari values and traditions.
Supreme Education Council 114

4-2-3 Learning Resources:

In order to complement curriculum development processes, various learning resources were developed for all content
areas across all grades by local teams in order to ensure that they meet Qatari curriculum standards and values, and
through joint actions among local teams and international publishing houses in order to provide students and teachers
with learning sources in paper and electronic forms, as well as enriching and supporting materials, interactive textbooks,
teacher’s guide and lesson plans.
Learning sources were also provided for bilingual mathematics and science. Textbook development was not limited to
public schools; textbooks and learning resources related to the history of the State of Qatar in both Arabic and English
were developed for private schools.
Moreover, supporting learning resources were provided for teachers and students (hard and soft copies) for all content
areas.

4-3 Advisory Committees:

4-3-1 Independent School Principals Advisory Committee:

In light of the SEC’s strategy to develop education and overcome challenges, based on its conviction that all parties
must partake and participate, and since school principals are the closest to the reality of the educational field in terms of
facing relevant daily challenges and problems within the school environment, the committee was established to provide
a number of relevant leadership competencies to discuss such challenges and problems, in addition to proposing the
best solutions to overcome them and following up the effects of change and development through daily school life.
The committee seeks to improve the culture of dialogue and consultation among principals, and express their concerns
and propositions, in order to achieve the following goals:
- Promoting teamwork and consultation among educational leaderships and increasing their participation in the
development process.
- Exchanging different educational experiences and expertise in order to face obstacles and problems faced in
education, and proposing practical solutions.
- Promoting professional partnership with decision makers from educational leaderships within the SEC in order
to assess educational decisions, programs and plans.
- Participating in the preparation of future education development plans in the country.
 115 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

The committee is tasked with the elaboration of an annual plan and the relevant implementation mechanisms
according to the principles of the education development initiative in the State of Qatar, as well as monitoring educational
challenges and issues and offering adequate recommendations and solutions, providing advice to achieve the visions
and aspirations aimed at promoting the educational process, giving special attention to comprehensive development
and quality, activating social programs and participating in educational meetings and events.

4-3-2 Advisory Committee for School Teachers:

Teachers in the State of Qatar enjoy the support of the Qatari society, due to their active role in the achievement of
outstanding and qualitative outcome, through active participation in the SEC’s initiatives and activities. This participating
is based on teachers’ full awareness of the roles assigned to them as citizens before being teachers, in order to ensure
the graduation of aware generations characterized by the spirit of responsible citizenship, and able to realize the State’s
ambitious visions and aspirations, the most important of which is Qatar Vision 2030.
In order to complement the support provided to teachers, and activate and promote the partnership with teachers while
benefiting from the opinions, propositions, and constructive criticism for the development of the educational process
and the improvement of its outpots, the SEC sought the establishment of an advisory committee for teachers which
includes a select elite of State male and female teachers who obtain committee membership through a standardized
selection mechanism characterized with transparency and integrity, according to carefully selected standards in order
to ensure the quality of the selected members’ performance in the Advisory Committee which holds 81 members.
The Committee seeks to promote the culture of dialogue and consultation among teachers and express their concerns
and propositions, with the aim of achieving the following goals:
- Involving teachers in the development of the educational process, and instilling confidence between the
leadership and the domain, as well as exchanging expertise.
- Monitoring obstacles and challenges in the educational field, discussing their causes, and proposing adequate
solutions according to teachers’ visions and aspirations.
- Promoting professional partnership with educational leaderships in order to assess educational decisions,
programs, and plans.
- Promoting teachers’professional development in order to perfect their profession and improve their performance.
- Activating dialogue mechanisms, increasing communication opportunities, and exchanging experiences
between teachers and educational leaderships.
The Committee is also tasked with preparing an annual plan for its work, establishing implementation activities
according to the principles of the education development initiative in the State of Qatar, monitoring educational issues
Supreme Education Council 116

and challenges and offering adequate solutions and recommendations, offering advice in order to achieve aspirations
and visions aimed at promoting the educational process, focusing on comprehensive development and quality of all
that is relevant to the educational process, and participating in educational meetings and events.
There is also an advisory committee for boards of trustees.

4-3-3 Student Councils:

Student councils are one of the internal means of societal communication. They constitute a new framework for
informing students about their role, providing them with the right to express their opinions, and developing their skills
and abilities with regard to discussion and dialogue management, as well as implementing the principles of democracy,
notably defining their rights and the means to claim them.
Every school has a student council represented by students directly elected by the school’s students, and tasks are
distributed among its members. Regular meetings are held between student council representatives of all schools and
all educational stages, where they discuss their problems and come up with solutions. Additionally, regular seasonal
meetings are held with officials to convey their ideas and needs.

4-3-4 Boards of Trustees and Parents Councils:

Schools allow parents to play a role in the management of said schools through boards of trustees and parents councils.
The schools’ organizational structure includes boards of trustees and parents councils.
The board of trustees is a supervisory body and one of the elements of legal regulation required in every independent
school. Its role consists of providing advice, representing parents and the society, and helping the school with quality
control.
Board members ensure that the school is compliant with laws and regulations and is benefiting from its sources in
order to fulfill its message stipulated in its strategic plan. They also offer advice to the school principal with regard to
spreading the school’s and achievements for society, maintaining the school’s secretariat and accountability process,
diversifying sources, fundraising, and actively participating in the school.
In most schools, the board of trustees consists of nine members, including the chairman, the vice chairman, the
secretary, and the treasurer. They are elected and subsequently constitute the board’s executive committee. The board
convenes once a month, and undertakes its tasks through various committees, such as the financial committee, the
fundraising committee and others. Each committee comprises two or three of the board’s members.
 117 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Additionally, a parents council is established in every school in order to ensure successful and true cooperation
between parents and the school management, as well as raising parent awareness. Through such council, the students’
educational, behavioral, and social situation is discussed by the two key parties tasked with building students personality.
Such council meetings are held periodically and annually depending on the school’s needs, and in all educational stages.
Members of such associations discuss students’ situation, problems, and academic level. Usually, parents associations
are held at the beginning of the school year in order to provide parents with a clear outline of the school and its system,
in addition to the roles it plays to achieve its educational goals. Parents also spend an entire school day with their
children in classrooms in order to become familiarized with their educational matters.
Supreme Education Council 118

4-4 Professional Development:

4-4-1 Training Programs:

Since the Education Development initiative was launched in the State of Qatar (Education for a New Era), attention to
teacher development and training as well as school leaderships increased. A Professional Development Office of the
SEC’s Education Institute was established, with the task of developing a policy and strategies related to the professional
development of all administrative and teaching staff in independent schools, as well as offering a number of services,
namely:
- Providing a program for the training and development of teachers seeking to pursue a teaching career.
- Teachers professional development in teaching strategies and content areas.
- Offering assistance and support to new teachers.
- Providing developmental leadership programs for school principals and the administrative body in independent
schools. The Professional Development Office (PDO) regularly assesses schools’ needs in order to offer training
programs which meet the requirements of every school and its faculty. Additionally, all independent schools
develop a special program for the development of its faculty’s competencies, in all fields of the educational
process, and using new technologies after approving such plans by the PDO .

Key training programs include Curriculum Standards Programs at both Entry and Proficient levels, the Ambitious
Leaders Program, the Aspiring Leaders Program, the program adopted in educational leadership, leadership diploma,
school self-Review, national professional standards programs for teachers and school leaders, and programs for the
coordinators of learning resource centers.

4-4-2 National Professional Standards for Leaders and Teachers:

The SEC established a system of professional standards for teachers and school principals. The State of Qatar played
a pioneering role in the Arab region in this regard. such standards are aimed at identifying a large group of goals,
knowledge, capacities, and necessary knowledge for their work throughout the course of their career path, in order to
provide high quality education and help support and develop teachers, as well as finding a common reference for the
characterization of the works they undertake, promote the diversified and complex work they undertake, and provide
them with support during their work in schools.
Such standards address the key requirements which must be available in all school teachers. They consist of 12
intertwined standards which fully cover the professional career.
 119 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

These standards also define three phases of professional teacher development during their professional career, and
the performance expected of them in every phase. These phases were divided into the following categories (Entry level
teachers, Proficient level teachers, and Advanced level teachers).
During the elaboration of such standards, the importance of defining them in a uniform format was taken into
account, where every standard includes the following elements: Statements, Indicators, Required Skills, Required
Knowledge, Required Disposition, Evidence Guide, and Examples of evidence. Teachers also have access to an electronic
assessment tool which helps them reflect on their professional practices and identify the strengths of their work and
areas of development, in addition to identifying learning and personal development goals , , and develop professional
development plans at the individual, collective, and institutional levels.
Leaders standards consist of seven standards, and school leaders are divided into two categories:
- Occupants of senior management positions in schools such as: operators, school principals and vice principals.
- Occupants of middle management as well as other employees tasked with certain responsibilities in schools.
Teacher standards have several goals:

- Promoting students learning: The standards recognize that promoting and developing student learning is at the
core of teachers’ and school leaders’ work.
- Create safe, supportive and challenging learning environment: The standards recognize that school teachers
and leaders are bound by a common responsibility which consists of developing efficient, safe, supporting and
intellectually challenging learning environments, whether at the classroom level or at the overall school level.
- Optimal use of resources supporting student learning process: The standards recognize the school teachers’ and
leaders’ responsibility in terms of managing school resources whether at the classroom or school level, in order
to provide the best possible learning opportunities.
- Building active partnerships between the school and society: The standards recognize school leaders’ and
teachers’ responsibility to develop permanent partnerships between the school, on one hand, and parents,
students and local community on the other, in a way that supports students learning.
- Teamwork: The standards recognize that school teachers and leaders, in the framework of the professional
responsibilities, must work in such conditions in which they have to work in various teams, requiring them to
possess skills for communication and collegiality, and occasionally be able to participate in and lead teams.
- Training in professional practice: The standards recognize that school teachers and leaders, in the framework
of the professional responsibilities, must be capable of analyzing and developing their performance, as well as
engaging in a continuing learning process.
Supreme Education Council 120

Professional Standards for School Leaders seek to achieve a set of goals, including:
- Leading and managing the teaching and learning processes within the school community.
- Elaborating the school’s strategic vision, mission and goals, and spreading them in society.
- Implementing, monitor, review and report the school’s strategic vision and goals.
- Leading and managing change.
- Leading and developing individuals and teams.
- Developing and managing relations between the school and the society.
- Preparing and managing resources.
- Reflect, evaluate and improveleadership and management.

Specialized training programs:

These programs are directed to independent schools, due to their importance in the educational field according to
recent studies. They include:
- Coaching program: In this program, an experienced and wise individual helps other individuals grow and
develop in a learning context, which is a powerful tool in the school development process.
- Student assessment file program: Aimed at considering a series of techniques and strategies which can
be used in the data collection process with regard to student learning such as portfolios, classroom notes,
and questionnaires, in addition to considering how to use such information in the process of planning and
classification. This program targets independent school teachers.
- Early Years program: Focuses on training kindergarten teachers and developing their skills with regard to
using teaching methods in classrooms where the child could be the center of attention, in order to help them
use current teaching curricula in helping children develop skills of selection and critical thinking. This program
targets kindergarten female teachers in independent schools, who didn’t get the chance to enroll in such
courses.
- School self-Review program: Aimed at helping those in leadership positions with developing a self-Review
system and ensuring effective quality, in order to improve the quality of teaching and learning and student
attainment measuring standards. It is highly important for schools striving for excellence, and targets independent
school operators, principals and vice principals.
- Differentiation program: Aimed at developing and implementing a list of effective practices that enable
schools to take into account the individual needs of disabled, talented and excellent students. The program
 121 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

targets learning difficulties coordinators, and teachers dealing with this category, as well as gifted and talented
students.
- Classroom organization and management program: Concerned with how to manage the learning
environment and its sources, controlling classes and time, and linking it to curricular planning. This program
targets independent school teachers.
Several training programs have been launched, the number of which is shown in the following table.

Table 49: Number of training programs and trainees for 2005/2006 – 2012/2013

Year Number of Trainees Number of Programs

2005/2006 2,765 90
2010/2011 5,000 25
2011/2012 7,500 30
2012/2013 7,633 36

Add to that the programs that are being implemented at the school level. Training programs are varied, in that they
include additional educational support, curriculum standards, leadership, using educational sources and research skills,
self-review, using the computer, and training strategies and methods.

4-4-3 Professional License for Teachers and School Leaders:

The SEC has given a great deal of attention to the training of teachers and school leaders in the State of Qatar in the
framework of the development of the educational system, thus ensuring that their roles are complementary, in addition
to the vital roles played by other elements with clear effects on education and upbringing; these elements are the
family and the society.
Experiences and studies have proven that the school teacher and leadership are the main necessary elements in
ensuring the success of the educational system, and that providing them with continued support ensures the school
success and excellence, along with other factors which impact on the learning and teaching processes.
Supreme Education Council 122

In this regard, the SEC established the Professional Licensing Office for School Teachers and Leaders in the Evaluation
Institute in 2008/2009, in order to offer independent-school teachers and leaders professional licenses which promote
teacher competence on one hand, and promote the efficiency of other education elements, as well as develop evaluation
standards which the Evaluation Institute relies on.
The program requires that school teachers and leaders acquire a professional license in all independent and private
schools in the State of Qatar, notably Arab and international private schools, in order to practice the teaching profession.
Every private and independent school has a coordinator appointed by the school to – in addition to their core tasks –
communicate with the Professional Licensing Office for Teachers and School Leaders of the Evaluation Institute.
Teachers’ licensing levels are: Entry, Proficient and Advanced. As for leaders, these levels are as follows: Middle
Leadership and Upper Leadership. The license duration is a maximum of three years. The employee can apply for a
higher level license in a shorter period of time. Same-level license renewal is after three years.
Every employee prepares a portfolio which includes their accomplishments based on the professional standards. Such
portfolio is reviewed by Evaluation Institute specialists, and then presented to the Attestation Committee in order to
consider the portfolio and issue the relevant recommendations. After acquiring the license, teachers and leaders gain
financial incentives according to license category and level.
The following table shows the number and percentage of teachers with professional licenses by license level.

Table 50: Number and percentage of teachers with professional license by license level

Number of Number of degree

License Level Percentage
Employees holders
Upper Management 167 61 36.5
Middle Management 380 86 23
Proficient 1,708 613 36
Entry 11,515 1,166 10
Educational Support
Professional
2,186 - -

Total 15,956 1,926 12%

_________________________________
- The aforementioned programs are those implemented by the Education Institute within the Supreme Education Council.
 123 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

This table shows that the number of professional license holders is 1926. During the upcoming two years, an increase
in this number and the percentage (up to around 100%) is expected.

Figure (18): Number of teachers and leaders with professional licenses by license level for 2012/2013

4-5 Improving School Performance:

4-5-1 Periodic (Triennial) Review of Independent Schools:

The periodic (triennial) review and evaluation process for independent schools is an intrinsic part of the evaluation
of such schools in order to see what they achieved throughout the course of three years since their work began as
independent schools, and identify the strengths and weaknesses of their work. This evaluation goes in line with the
schools’ continued monitoring, self-evaluation and evaluation by-exception in order to achieve true educational
accountability, and promote autonomy and diversity as two of the main principle of independent schools in Qatar.
The Evaluation Institute provides all reviewed independent schools with comprehensive reports on evaluation results
in all areas, including administration and leadership, teaching and learning, standards and performance, educational
environment and curricula, staff development and distribution, and the school’s relations with parents and the
community. A copy of such reports is sent to the competent bodies within the SEC and to the Education Institute in
order to address the issues highlighted by the report, and define the strengths and aspects which require improvement
and development, as well as offer practical recommendations to the schools to help them keep up with the perspectives
Supreme Education Council 124

and goals of the education development initiative in the State, which makes such reports a very important document
for parents, members of society, and decision makers in the educational process.
On the other hand, 20 important areas were identified within the schools’ functions and performance, covering the
most important aspects. They are also elements which allow the school to be effective. Such fields have been gathered
under six main headings. It was also ensured that they are not based on reviewing the educational aspects in the State
of Qatar, and that they take into account the four main principles of the education development initiative in Qatar –
diversity, autonomy, choice and accountability – as well as evaluating the extent to which these principles’ contribute
to educational practices in schools, and that true evaluation is undertaken on an individual basis for each school while
focusing on 5 to 7 key areas with regard to the school’s performance and work. The Schools Evaluation Office of the
Evaluation Institute identifies these fields, one of which is the students’ academic learning, as well as 3 or 4 other areas
pertaining to the school’s main outcome, in addition to one or two other important areas concerning the goals and
mission of the school being evaluated.
The evaluation teams, during their evaluation of all school areas, use consistent and defined measures through
which evidence is gathered and evaluated. Subsequently, they issue their judgment and conclusions about the school.
Additionally, the teams benefit from vast data in order to undertake and complete school evaluation, by obtaining,
gathering, and analyzing such data during and after school evaluation, through several main sources such as reviewing
school records and documents, in addition to conducting interviews with school principals, employees, students and
parents, and making classroom observations in every school, as well as direct observations and analyzing student results
in the Qatar Comprehensive Educational Assessment tests (QCEA), and the school performance report card.
The following table shows the number of schools periodically evaluated between 2006/2007 – 2012/2013.

Table 51: Number of schools reviewed periodically (triennially)

between 2006/2007 – 2012/2013

Year Number of Resident Schools

2006/2007 18
2010/2011 33
2011/2012 29
2012/2013 34
Total 114
 125 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

4-5-2 National School Accreditation:

National School Accreditation was established in order to build a Qatari local system equivalent to global accreditation
systems, develop private schools performance, and improve it so that it parallels international school performance
which will help promote educational outcomes. This system was built internally, guided by global experiences and
expertise, and by establishing partnerships with international accreditation bodies such as the Western Association of
Schools and Colleges (ASC WASC).
Accreditation is based on measuring the quality of educational performance against a set of standards and indicators
which are comprehensive, objective, flexible, and ensure the principle of participation, continuity, development and
measurability. The main areas of accreditation are: Educational Leadership, Educational Performance and Learning
Environment, development and fostering of learners, resource management, and parental and societal partnership,
which includes 14 standards.
Accreditation goes through the following stages:

Visit by School
Grant or Deny
Candidacy Accreditation Self-Review School Visit Recommendation
accreditation
Team

Accreditation categories are shown in the following table:

Table 52: National school accreditation categories

Category Recommendation

First Granting accreditation for a period of five years

Second Granting accreditation for a period of 3 years

Third Refusing accreditation

The School Evaluation Office has also launched awareness campaigns related to private schools accreditation. It also
offered a number of training sessions on all stages and mechanisms of accreditation, in addition to field visits and
individual meetings with schools. A series of guidelines was also published.
Supreme Education Council 126

The number of schools with candidacy for national accreditation reached 47 Arab and international schools, while six
schools were nationally accredited in 2012/2013.

4-5-3 School Performance Report Card:

The school performance report card is one of the major characteristics of education development initiative, especially
with regard to the available choices for parents to interact and engage in discussions with schools regarding the
development and improvement of their work, in addition to making appropriate decisions when it comes to choosing
the right school for their children with high educational quality, based on accurate and comprehensive information
on all aspects of the educational process. The data provided in the card includes an important range of information,
offering a clear outline of what the schools performance in most educational and pedagogical aspects.
The data mentioned in the school performance report card was gathered from several sources, the most important
of which is the comprehensive educational survey data, the census data, student results in the Qatar Comprehensive
Educational Assessment (QCEA) tests, and student results in international tests (PISA – TIMSS – PIRLS).
The card also includes all schools on Qatari territory, whether public or private. This data is also available on the SEC’s
website, and is distributed (electronically and in hard copies) to all schools.

4-6 Educational Vouchers Program:

This program is aimed at establishing an integrated system which ensures the principles of Variety and Choice among
schools that are competing for their students, through providing high quality education and offering them educational
vouchers, whether in independent schools or in approved private and outstanding schools.
This program seeks to provide more options and alternatives in the educational system, and raise the level of
competition among schools, in addition to promoting achievement standards in private schools and increasing the
number of outstanding schools, as well as promoting educational choices for Qatari parents and increasing such
opportunities.
The quality of education is the main goal of expanding the Educational Vouchers system. After it used to only include
independent schools, it now also includes private schools with an educational level equal or superior to independent
schools after obtaining school accreditation.
The use of coupons has begun in its first stage in nine schools and certain categories limited to those who are not
working or retirees. In the academic year 2012/2013, the system was expanded to include the children of all Qataris in
participant schools. The number of schools included in the system was also raised, in addition to fixing the value of the
educational vouchers at QR 28,000. The number of participant school reached 23 in 2012/2013.
 127 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

4-7 Outstanding Schools Program:

The Outstanding Schools Program began in 2007 following a decision by Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser.
This is one of the programs undertaken only by the State of Qatar. It was developed to meet the increasing demand on
outstanding private education in the State of Qatar. The Outstanding Schools Initiative adopted the principles of the
Education Development Initiative, notably Variety and Choice. The best schools from all around the world are attracted
in order to establish branches to cater for Qatari and foreign students.
The best schools adopting national or international curricula, and with academic accreditation from known international
educational organizations, are chosen, in addition to teaching curricula of Arabic language, Islamic Education, and
Qatari Social Studies.
Two schools were opened in 2008, as well as two schools in 2009 and 2013 respectively. Two schools are set to be
opened in 2014: Qatar Finland International School and Shanghai High School (The schools that were opened are:
DeBakey High School for Health Professions, International School of London, Sherborne Qatar School, and the Spanish
SEK International School).

4-8- Education Excellence Day Award:

In order to ensure that the State celebrates its distinguished citizens, the Education Excellence Day Award was created
in 2006/2007. Considering the significance and status of this award, it is honored by the sponsorship and presence of
His Highness Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani – The Emir of Qatar.
This honoring emanates from His Highness’ belief that the richest national wealth is the human wealth, and the State
is deploying all possible efforts to prepare its children and develop their skills and abilities in order for them to become
active players in the State’s development.
This Award is aimed at spreading the culture of creativity and scientific excellence in the Qatari society, which leads to
the improvement of the countries educational outputs, and helps supplement the Qatari economy with distinguished,
qualified, and capable competencies which are able to manage State institutions, in addition to motivating all individuals
and educational institutions to develop their performance.
The Award includes six categories: Secondary School Graduates, University Graduates and PhD Holders, Secondary
Students Scientific Research, Excellent Teacher and Excellent School.
An honoring ceremony is held yearly for the winners, under the auspices – and with the presence – of His Highness
Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani – The Emir of Qatar – and the winners are rewarded with financial rewards and
medals.
Supreme Education Council 128

4-9 e-Learning:
A strategic plan was adopted for all that is related to providing applications and electronic solutions through the
e-Learning project in order to provide students with access to the learning process at any given time, and to provide
an exciting learning environment. This also contributes to finding developed and various teaching methods which fit
societal characteristics and meet the students’ needs.
The project includes the following programs:
• Device for every student
• e-Content
• e-Library
• LMS Learning Management System
• e-Evaluation
 129 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

In order to achieve this:

• A facilitation committee was established to follow-up all matters related to e-learning projects.
• The project was implemented in 50 pilot schools.
• e-learning applications will function in a complementary manner which provides the following features:
• Help school community members communicate and get information which helps them make decisions.
• Allow parents to communicate with the school and keep up with their children’s performance.
• Provide decision makers with performance indicators.
• Provide authoring tools for teachers.
• Provide live online education for students.
• Provide on-going assessment for students in the classroom.
• Provide a classroom management system.
• Help students and parents learn and access learning resources anytime, anywhere.
Training sessions were offered within a professional development comprehensive plan in the field of education
technology for the school community categories.

4-10 The Qatar National Education Database System:

The SEC’s Evaluation Institute established and developed the e-portal for the Qatar National Education Database
System (QNEDS) in 2007, which is tasked with providing comprehensive information regarding the educational system
in the State of Qatar, including students, teachers, and schools. The system also aims at supporting the decision-making
process with regard to the educational policies and programs which help and expedite the achievement of the desired
goals, as well as allowing the use of data available on the System by allowing access to the required information for
various users, whether teachers or principals. The System also seeks to promote the value of data by applying statistical
techniques to provide new and useful data and information, in addition to encouraging mutual dialogue among
stakeholders in education and the educational process.
The System includes educational indicators and online services (teachers’ and leaders’ portfolio), as well as various
educational reports.

4-11 Education Outputs:

As previously noted, Qatar Vision 2030 focuses on distinguished education outputs and promoting the level of the
Qatar educational system in order for it to keep up with distinguished educational systems, and meet the needs of
Supreme Education Council 130

Qatari citizens and the Qatari society. In order to ensure that students perfected the required skills, competencies and
knowledge, the following assessment tools were applied:

4-11-1 Qatar Comprehensive Educational Assessment (QCEA):

They are national examinations and an essential tool for assessingthe progress of the educational system. Their
implementation started in 2004/2005, in cooperation with international houses of vast expertise in testing (ETS and
CTB), in order to build local capacity in the area of tests development, as well as the development of the national
examinations system.
The QCEA is a series of standardized tests which are aligned with the curriculum standards, and are administered to
students from Grade 4 through Grade 11. They started with four content areas: Arabic language, English language,
Mathematics and Science. In 2010/2011, they also included Social Studies and Islamic Studies.
Such examinations seek to provide an outline of the performance of students, schools and teachers, according to
the National Curriculum Standards. They also offer information on the strengths and improvement areas in student’s
performance. The results provide information on student achievement at the national, school, classroom, content area,
and student levels by issuing detailed analytical reports.
Such examinations also measure the proficiency level in the required skills through a series of multiple choice items
(questions), as well as short or long extended response items (questions) depending on the nature of the content area.
The examinations include students from all private and independent schools implementing Qatari National Curriculum
Standards.

Qatar Comprehensive Educational Assessment Results:

Below is a presentation of student results in Grade 4 and Grade 8, in Arabic language, English language, Mathematics,
and Science.

(1) Arabic Language:

The following table illustrates Arabic Language student results in in Grade 4 and Grade 8 in 2009/2010 – 2012/2013
 131 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Table 53: Results of Arabic Language students in Grade 4 and Grade 8

Average Standard Grade

Year Grade 4 Grade 8

2009/2010 469.7 520.9

2011/2012 477.3 539.4

2011/2012 477.9 529.4

2012/2013 495.8 533.8

This table illustrates an improvement in Grade 4 student performance in Arabic language, where the average standard
score rose from 469.7 in 2009/2010 to 495.8 in 2012/2013.
As for Grade 8, student performance fluctuates. The results show a remarkable improvement in the percentage of
students who met the standards, since their percentage in Grade 4 rose to 20.7% in 2012/2013 from 4.1% in 2009/2010.
Similarly, in Grade 4, the percentage of students who met the standards increased to 19.2% in 2012/2013 from 5% in
2009/2010. This can be attributed to the increased awareness within the school community of the importance of these
examinations, especially that these examinations are calculated within the student’s final results. It is also attributed to the
increase of training sessions for teachers on writing items (questions) similar to the items of the national examinations,
as well as training students on questions similar to those of the national examinations.
Supreme Education Council 132

Figure (19): Average standard Arabic examination scores for Grade 4 and Grade 8 students
in 2009/2010 – 2012/2013

Average standard score for grade 4 Average standard score for grade 8

(2) English Language

The following table shows the results of students in Grade 4 and Grade 8 in the content area of English for 2009/2010
and 2012/2013

Table (54): Results of students in Grade 4 and Grade 8 in English

Average Standard Scores

Year Grade 4 Grade 8
2009/2010 521.4 534.2
2010/2011 523.7 550.4
2011/2012 523.9 548.1
2012/2013 533.6 557.9
 133 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

From the previous table, it is evident that there was an improvement in the performance of Grade 4 students in
English through the years, with a 12-point difference between the academic years 2009/2010 and 2012/2013. Grade 8
witnessed a 23-point improvement between the academic years 2009/2010 and 2012/2013.
The level of meeting the standards shows a visible improvement in the percentage of students who met the standards
in Grade 4, from 11.1% in 2009/2010 up to 33.2% in 2012/2013. The same applies to Grade 8, in which the rate of
meeting the Standards went up to 22%, in comparison with 8.5% in 2009/2010. This is due to the training of students
on national examination patterns, the student’s commitment, the interest exhibited by school administrations and
teachers towards national examinations, and awareness raised about them.

Figure (20): Average standard English examination scores for Grade 4 and Grade 8 students
in 2009/2010 – 2012/2013

Average standard score for grade 4 Average standard score for grade 8
Supreme Education Council 134

(3) Mathematics
The following table shows the results of Grade 4 and Grade 8 students in Mathematics for the periods of 2009/2010
and 2012/2013.

Table (55): Results of Grade 4 and Grade 8 students in mathematics

Average Standard Scores

Year Grade 4 Grade 4
2009-2010 419.5 490.4
2010-2011 463.5 539.8
2011-2012 477.3 548.1
2012-2013 516.3 576.1

From the above table, it is clear that a noticeable improvement was made in the students’ performance in both grades in
mathematics, close to 100 points in Grade 4 and 80 points in Grade 8. This shows an improvement in student performance.
Additionally, there was an increase in the percentage of students who met the standards in both grades, with 20.3%
in Grade 4 and a 19.7% increase from the 2009/2010 academic year, and 14.7% in Grade 8 in the 2012/2013 academic
year, after hitting 0.1% in 2009/2010. This is due to an array of reasons, including teachers’ and school administrations’
interest in national examinations, intensifying student training program on national examination patterns, accounting
for the national examination results in students’ final scores and motivating students through national examination
competitions.
 135 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Figure (21): Average standard mathematics examination scores for Grade 4 and Grade 8 students
in 2009/2010 – 2012-2013

Average standard score for grade 4 Average standard score for grade 8

(4) Science
The following table shows the results of students in Grade 4 and Grade 8 in the content area of science for the periods
of 2009/2010 and 2012/2013.

Table (56): Results of Grade 4 and Grade 8 students in science

Average Standard Scores

Year
Grade 4 Grade 8
2009/2010 477.9 462.6
2010/2011 554.7 543
2011/2012 560.6 546
2012/2013 595.9 566.7
Supreme Education Council 136

From the From the above table, it is clear that there was a considerable improvement in the performance of Grade 4
and Grade 8 students, though it was sharper in Grade 4. The average scores were 477.9 in 2009/2010; they increased
to 595.9 in 2012/2013. There was also an significant rise in meeting the standards in Grade 4, with 51.3% in 2012/2013.
Additionally, there was a 15% increase in the number of Grade 8 students who met said standards from 11.2% in
2012/2013, and from 0.5% initially. This is due to the interest shown by teachers and school administration in national
examinations, raising awareness about said examinations, students’ commitment, and teachers efforts to prepare
students to national examination questions by covering similar question patterns in class.

Figure (22): Average standard science examination scores for Grade 4 and Grade 8 students
in 2009/2010 – 2012-2013

Standard average scores for grade 4 Standard average scores for grade 8

4-11-2 Secondary School Examinations

Grade 12 students are assessed through the Qatar Secondary School Certificate (QSSC) program, based on the principle
of assessing all of what students have accomplished and learned in terms of experience and information, through a
number of external examinations set by the Evaluation Institute on one hand, and classroom assessment of students by
teachers on the other hand; these examinations are all controlled and supervised.
The role of external examinations is to support the assessment process, in order to give a realistic, more precise
understanding of students’ comprehensive performance and abilities. External examinations aim at comparing schools,
 137 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

as assessment reflects teachers’ performance, schools level and level of efforts exerted to develop education. External
examinations are based on the Foundation Standards of the following content areas: Islamic Studies, Arabic, English,
Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, Biology, and Social Studies. External examinations include multiple choice questions,
constructed response questions, and short constructed response questions, depending on the nature of the content
area.

Table (57): Success rate in Grade 12 subjects for the

academic years 2010/2011 – 2012/2013

Success Rate by Academic Year

Subject
2010-2011 2011-2012 2012-2013
Arabic – Foundation 99.0 99.4 98.3
Arabic – Advanced 98.0 84.9 94.9
English – Foundation 90.8 94.0 94.6
English - Advanced 86.4 89.4 83.4
Mathematics – Foundation 85.7 93.6 85.7
Mathematics – Advanced 89.8 96.7 92.4
Physics – Foundation 86.1 89.2 88.8
Physics – Advanced 96.7 98.3 97.7
Chemistry- Foundation 92.0 93.7 90.2
Chemistry – Advanced 90.5 98.3 95.6
Biology – Foundation 86.0 83.5 87.6
Biology - Advanced 94.7 96.2 97.3
Supreme Education Council 138

4-11-3 International Examinations:

The State of Qatar seeks to develop a comprehensive assessment system for student in all schools; it aims to carry out
periodic general examinations according to the highest international standards in order to assess the extent to which
educational competencies are met; to complete the assessment cycle through school examinations and a the QCEA
system; to identify the status of our education in Qatar and student’s ranking internationally; to identify the areas of
strength and weakness in students performance; and to compare the performance of Qatar’s students with their peers
from around the world. Qatar has participated in three examinations:
- The Program for International Student Assessment (PISA)
which covers three specific areas: reading, mathematics and science, as well as problem-solving skills in each of these
areas without focusing on the curriculum content, rather on basic knowledge and skills students need in their lives.
The study also focuses on the understanding of concepts and the ability to work in any field, in order to measure how
successful 15-year old students are as they are on the brink of completing their basic education.
The results of Qatar’s students in the previous three studies:

Table (58): Results of Qatar in PISA 2006, 2009 and 2012

Session
Subject 2006 2009 2012

Reading 312 372 388

Mathematics 318 368 376

Science 349 379 384

The above table shows that Qatar has made considerable progress between the first and third cycles in reading, going
up 76 points. In mathematics, the progress between the two cycles was of 58 points, with 35 points in science.
 139 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Figure (23): Qatar results of in PISA 2006, 2009 and 2012

Reading mathematics science

- Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS)

An international study that focuses on educational policies and systems, efficiency of adopted curricula and teaching
methods and practical implementation, evaluation of achievements, and provision of information to improve the process
of teaching and learning of mathematics and science. This study is administered on Grade 4 and Grade 8 students in
mathematics and science. Qatar participated in TIMSS 2007 and 2011 cycles.
The results of these two cycles are as follows:

Table (59): Results of Qatar in TIMSS 2007 and 2011

Science Mathematics
Session Grade 4 Grade 8 Grade 4 Grade 8

2007 294 319 296 307

2011 394 419 413 410

Supreme Education Council 140

Qatar made significant progress and improvement in its results between the two cycles, in both content areas and
both grades. The highest rise appears in Grade 4 in mathematics, with a 117-point progress, followed by mathematics
in Grade 8 with a 103-point progress. There was an equal progress in science in both Grade 4 and Grade 8; Qatar’s
registered progress makes it one of the top countries that have improved between the two cycles.

Figure (24): Results of Qatar’s students in TIMSS 2007 and 2011

Grade 4 Grade 8 Grade 4 Grade 8

Mathematics Science

- Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS)

A study based on assessing the ability of Grade 4 students in reading in their mother tongue. Grade 4 was selected
because it constitutes an important turning point in the development of child readers. At this stage, children have
acquired reading skills, and have started reading for learning. Qatar participated in two cycles, in 2006 and 2011.
 141 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Below are the results of Qatar in the two cycles.

Table (60): Results of Qatar’s students in the two PIRLS sessions

Year Grade 4

2006 353

2011 425

In this table, it is clear that Qatar has progressed 72 points in reading skills between the two cycles.

Figure (25): Results of Qatar’s students in PIRLS, 2007 and 2011

Grade 4

This is due to the increasing awareness about the importance of international examinations, training students on
similar items, training teachers to prepare questions similar to the examination items and applying them during classes,
and motivating students to participate effectively through national school-level competitions.
Supreme Education Council 142
 143 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Part IV
Implementing EFA Strategies
Supreme Education Council 144
 145 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Part IV
Implementing EFA Strategies
The Dakar Framework of Action (2000) included twelve strategies to meet EFA goals. The eighth paragraph of the
Framework stated that governments, organizations and agencies represented at the World Education Forum shall be
committed to the implementation of such strategies. The following is Qatar’s level of commitment to such strategies.

1) Mobilizing strong national and international political commitment to EFA, setting national
action plans and tangibly increasing investment in basic education:
1-1 The Qatari Constitution of 2004:
The articles of the constitution, particularly Articles 25 and 49, state that education is pivotal, compulsory, and free
of charge. Article 25 states that “Education is one of the basic pillars of social progress. The State shall ensure, foster and
promote education” . Article 49 states that “All citizens have the right to education, and the State shall endeavor to make
general education compulsory and free of charge in accordance with the applicable laws and regulations of the State.”
1-2- Qatar’s National Vision 2030:
Qatar National Vision 2030, in its Human Development pillar, focused on education, health, and work-force
development as the connecting three sides of the integrated comprehensive development triangle. This pillar aims at
the development of the citizens of Qatar to be able to build a prosperous society and transform the economic system
from sole dependence on oil and gas, to enable the people of Qatar to react and interact with the new knowledge-
based and highly competitive world order. This would be achieved by building advanced health and education systems
that offer the best services, and by developing a motivated workforce to achieve growth, with an effective participation
of the national labor force, supported by skilled expatriate workers.
1-3 Education and Training Strategy 2011-2016
Qatar National Vision 2030, aiming at transforming the State of Qatar into a developed nation by 2030, commits to
providing world-class educational system that equips citizens to achieve their aspirations and to meet the changing needs of
Qatar. In order to place Qatar on the path to realizing that goal, the Education and Training Sector Strategy 2011-2016 was
adopted, setting a comprehensive program to implement reforms from early childhood education to higher education
and life-long learning. The strategy is based on the principles of quality, fairness and mobility, and on providing the
widest possible choices of educational opportunities.
An assessment of the strategy programs and initiatives (mid-term review) was carried out in 2013, based on which
a series of recommendations were made. Some of them pertained to implementation and others to strategies and
monitoring and assessment processes. Furthermore, two additional initiatives were added to the strategy, namely
Supreme Education Council 146

providing more high quality early years education, to form a solid basis for education until Grade 12, and to ensure that
students acquire reading, writing and mathematics skills appropriate for students in the first three years of school, and
in the promotion from one educational stage to another.

1-4 Laws and Legislations

- Emiri law number 25 of 2001 on compulsory education for all children in Qatar and law number 25 of 2009
pertaining to the amendment of the provisions of the law related to penalties of the law on compulsory
education; Article 11 was amended to penalize violators of the law with a fine of no less than five thousand
Qatari Riyals and no more than ten thousand Qatari Riyals.
- Ministerial decree number 48 of 2001 pertaining to the establishment of a committee to consider and develop
mechanisms for the implementation of the law on compulsory education.
- Ministerial decree number 6 of 2004 pertaining to the creation of the high committee for the supervision of the
project of educational integration of persons with disabilities.
- Ministerial decree number 15 of 2010 pertaining to the creation of the committee that looks into the infractions
of children’s custodians of the law on compulsory education, which provided in Article 8, the committee
mandates and terms of references, embodied in singling out relevant cases, analyzing the reasons for which
parents prevent their children from enrolling in school, taking the appropriate measures, determining the role
of parties represented in the decree, and submitting suggestions and procedural steps to enforce the law.
1-5 Increased Spending on Education Throughout the Years (see Part I).

1-6 Regional and International Initiatives Supporting EFA

- The Educate a Child initiative, an international initiative aiming at reducing the number of children who have
lost their right to education all over the world, due to conflicts, wars and natural disasters, children living in poor
city neighborhoods or remote rural areas, and categories that might face challenges in accessing education,
such as girls, persons with disabilities and minorities.
- The Al-Fakhoura initiative, launched in 2009 that aims at supporting and protecting students and schools in
conflict areas around the world, particularly in Gaza.
- The “Protecting Education in Insecurity and Armed Conflict” initiative of the Education Above All foundation of
2008, an international initiative for the protection, support and fostering the right to education in areas in or
threatened with crises, conflicts and wars.
 147 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

1-7 Establishing a Waqf Fund for Education and Health

Law number 6 of 2013 spoke of a fund for health and education. Law number 30 includes an article aiming at providing
sustainable financial resources for the support of health and educational services, and the parties providing them, as
well as providing financial support in case of emergency, in line with the higher interests of the State.

1-8 Expanding Private Sector Participation in Education

The Education and Training Strategy includes projects to activate the participation of the private sector, such as project
10-2 to make the participation of both private and public sector official; project 6-4 set a plan for industrial companies
to further develop technical and vocational training and education.
Some of the largest facets of the private sector’s participation in education came as the opening and expanding of
many private and outstanding schools and international universities at the Education City.

2) Fostering EFA policies within a context of truly comprehensive sustainable education, clearly linked
to strategies on eradication of poverty and achieving development.
The Education and Training Sector Strategy 2011-2016 took into account the link and integration across all educational
stages, and the creation of educational pathways linking them. Raising the competency level of educational outputs
was taken into account, in general education, to be aligned with the requirements of tertiary education and labor
market, through a series of programs and initiatives including:
- National Qualifications Framework
- Develop a plan to introduce distinct vocational and technical education and training programs that are aligned
with the needs of the labor market.
- Aligning tertiary education and the needs of the knowledge economy
- Introducing feedback mechanisms between higher education institutions and general education institutions
- Expanding education opportunities to include students who were unable to access university directly
- Develop awareness and labor skills in preparatory and secondary schools.
Furthermore, Qatar Vision 2030, as previously mentioned, included in its first pillar “Human Development”, the
“Development of all the people of Qatar to enable them to sustain a prosperous society,” i.e. develop and improve education,
health and the workforce.
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3) Ensuring the commitment and participation of Civil Society in the development, drafting,
implementation and follow up of educational strategies:
The “Education for a New Era” initiative stresses societal participation and contribution, embodied by the participation
and contribution of parents, and society in a number of issues and mechanisms such as:

3-1 Taking part in evaluating school performances through answering various questionnaires for the
comprehensive education assessment survey, and giving opinions and suggestions about their
children’s schools, as well as through holding personal interviews for schools triennial reviews.

3-2 Solicit their opinion about various policies and instruments through a general survey featured on the
SEC website, which is open to the public, as well as “student reports,” “parent reports” and others.

3-3 Advisory councils and committees, including:

- Parents Councils (all schools)
- Boards of Trustees (all schools)
- Advisory Committees for Parents Councils at the State level.

3-4 The representation of different sectors and parties when formulating the national Education and Training
Sector Strategy 2011-2016.

3-5 Dedicating education and training strategy projects to improve parent-school communication, taking
into account the principle of reforming the educational sector, which strived to realize two objectives:
increasing communication between schools and stakeholders, and increasing parent participation in
school affairs and providing them with information about school and student performance.
 149 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

4) Developing assessable systems to conduct and manage education that satisfy the needs and ensure
the participation of all:

The organizational structure of the SEC and its organs, as well as the structure and main principles of independent
schools, allow for a wide range of participation from all targeted groups and society; it is built on accountability through
the following:

4-1 Managing work and work systems:

Developing the Ministry’s organizational structure, and form the SEC with its three institutes, and its supporting
departments, per law number 37 of 2002, and organizing the SEC in accordance with law number 24 of 2009, describing
the Council as the competent authority for developing education to ensure meeting the needs of the state, in terms
of outstanding human resources and competencies in all fields, to draw up the national education policy. The SEC
comprises the Board of Directors, the Executive Committee, the General Secretariat, SEC Institutes and affiliated organs.

4-2 Developing evaluation and accountability systems:

Tools and strategies for schools accountability and students assessment were developed as follows:
- developing student assessment and examination systems, policies and guidelines for schools and students
(Comprehensive Educational Assessment, Qatar Secondary School Certificate (QSSC) program, International
Examinations).
- developing a system to evaluate private and public schools to ensure the quality of institutional performance,
holding schools accountable accordingly, and preparing protocols, guides and policies (schools triennial review
and review by exception, the National School Accreditation Program, School Performance Report Card, and
Schools Grading).

4-3 Developing steering systems and transforming them into electronic systems:
- Applying the Learning Management System LMS in all independent schools in order to facilitate the
communication process between all stakeholders of the educational process (students, teachers, parents, school
administration, SEC), to provide the ability to access information anywhere and anytime, and to strengthen
parents’ participation in the education community.
- Applying the National Student Information System (N-SIS), which covers all school students and employees, and
SEC staff; it aims at linking together different information, and informing decision-making, in order to better
develop the human resources of Qatar.
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- Establishing the Qatar National Educational Database System (QNEDS), which aims at implementing a unified
collective structure of educational data; this would contribute to the development of the educational process in
Qatar, through collecting, monitoring and analyzing academic performances of students, teachers and schools,
to enhance the educational process.

4-4 Offices and Departments in charge of developing performance

- Research and Policy Analysis Office
- Education and Training Sector Strategy Office
- Project Management Office.

5) Satisfying the needs of educational systems affected by conflicts, natural disasters and weather
fluctuations, and managing educational programs in ways that foster understanding, peace and
tolerance, and help prevent violence and conflict.

The SEC made sure to provide all the requirements and provisions that foster the security and safety of all members
of the educational system at all times. More so, when opening schools, there was a condition to make sure that they
upheld the safety and security requirements of the State. Therefore, the Civil Defense Department of the Ministry of
Interior inspects all schools, ensuring that safety and security requirements are met. All schools in Qatar carry out yearly
evacuation drills, and a number of training program and awareness gatherings are organized for school students,
administrators, and teachers, to inform them of the procedure to follow in case of fire, emergency, etc.
Furthermore, the Council is a member of the Permanent Committee for Emergency, which specializes in carrying
out studies and setting plans and measures to face disasters. It also formulates the rules and systems that ensure a
swift disaster relief, works on ensuring the safety of transport and communication, draws up plans for awareness and
awareness dissemination through the media, and takes the necessary measures to face natural disasters, fires, building
collapses, and others.
On another facet, the Values Education Framework, and the Values Education Program, which won the award for best
educational project in the Gulf States – Arab Education Bureau– in 2010, both seek to foster the values of tolerance and
peace, the rejection of violence, promoting social responsibility, respect of others, preservation of public property, and
volunteer work.
 151 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

6) Implementing integrated strategies for gender equality in education, involving recognizing the need
for of changing attitudes, values and practices.

The State of Qatar, in its quest to achieve social development, is keen on preserving a strong, cohesive family, and
providing it with support, care, and protection. What sets the Qatari experience apart in terms of the advancement
of women, is the comprehensive approach in dealing with women’s issues, stemming from a deep-rooted conviction
in the relation between the advancement of women, and the advancement of the sectors of health, education, and
economy. Therefore, all plans to develop such sectors have included explicit objectives of reinforcing services offered
to women, and women’s participation in such sectors at all levels. The Qatar Vision 2030 emphasized the fostering of
women’s abilities, and empowering her to participate in the economic and political spheres.
The Qatari constitution stipulates gender equality, ensuring the protection of women from all forms of discriminations,
and granting them equal opportunities to build their abilities, and protect and foster their rights, and to participate
positively in developing the society. There is a general, compulsory principle in the constitution, apparent in Article 34,
Supreme Education Council 152

which stipulates that “Citizens shall be equal in terms of public rights and duties.”
The indicators included in the report, be they related to students or teachers, are a positive proof of equality in
education. Some teacher indicators even show an increase of female teachers compared to male teachers in primary
education.
Furthermore, Qatar’s representation in the Convention to Eliminate All Forms of Discrimination Against Women
(CEDAW), is an indicator of the State’s keenness to give Qatari women an international role.

7) Urgently implementing of educational programs and initiatives to fight HIV/AIDS

The spread of AIDS in the State of Qatar remains limited, with an HIV prevalence rate that is still very low, except some
cases pertaining to some components of the 15-19 age group.
In order to raise further awareness about this, particularly among the youth, numerous seminars and workshops
were conducted, in which many members of the SEC and the Ministry of Education (previously) have participated, , to
introduce information specific to this disease to school and university curricula, in collaboration with the UNESCO and
competent state authorities. This content clearly appears in a number of science books in secondary stage.
The SEC and the Community Police department signed a partnership agreement, to jointly print out awareness leaflets
to be given during the lectures that will be delivered in all schools in the country.

8) Creating safe, secure and inclusive educational environments with fair resources, leading to excellence
in learning, and clearly determining the desired achievements for all.

Educational environment is the fortress through which the processes of teaching and learning are carried out. That is
why those in charge of the educational process were keen on providing this environment, in material and physical terms,
such as buildings, sanitary facilities, and instruments, and in behavioral and social terms, meaning the psychological
aspects or school environments most appropriate for curricular and extracurricular educational activities.
This interest was reflected in the goals set by both the national EFA plan, developed by the former Ministry of Education
in 2003; it also appeared in the Education and Training Sector Strategy 2011-2016.
The national EFA plan includes a number of goals aiming at creating a safe educational environment, such as:

• Establishing kindergartens, and schools, that meet the specifications and criteria of proper and healthy school
buildings.
 153 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

• Ensuring the needs of students are met, through equitable access to teaching-appropriate programs, and
gaining various skills.
• Improving all qualitative aspects of education, and ensuring excellence for all by improving curricula, schools,
and educational environments
• Concerning the Education and Training Sector Strategy, it contained a number of projects and programs linked
to safe and healthy educational environments, through:
 Implementing the national values program in all schools
 Implementing a new high quality national curriculum
 Finding a system specialized in investigating whether students with special needs are getting high quality
education
 Developing and improving education in private schools, and attracting academically outstanding schools to
open branches in Qatar.
These goals were translated on the field: many kindergartens and schools were built specifically to meet early
childhood teaching, learning, and growth requirements and needs. The design of schools buildings encourages
creativity, innovation, and learning through play; this also applies to administrative offices, professional rooms for
teachers, libraries, computer laboratories, recreation rooms, playrooms, and restrooms.
The SEC worked on making school curricula one of the pivotal instruments of improving the educational process
and its outputs, and to achieve excellence in learning. Therefore, school curricula and educational content were set
through developing national curriculum standards that represent the objectives to be met by students, and that meet
international expectations in terms of what students need to learn. It also showcases the skills they much acquire and
master, and eventually competently apply, at the end of each course, throughout K-12 education.
These standards were developed based on internationally approved benchmarks. This means it is aligned with
the curriculum standards of countries whose students always get the highest scores in international examinations.
In addition to the content areas curriculum standards, three frameworks for new curricula were created, for physical
education, family education, and value education, in order to help independent schools prepare courses for these
content areas. For a seamless implementation of the curriculum standards, the SEC provided teachers with three main
sources, to help them carry out their teaching, and provide an attractive educational environment, as follows:
- Action plans (meaning a long-term plan that helps teachers understand the standards, and facilitates their
translation into study modules and educational experiences).
- Learning resources which teachers, students, and parents can refer to, covering curriculum standards in various
content areas.
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- e-learning that included all schools, through providing digital libraries, and an electronic educational tablet for
each student. In addition, schools in Qatar use multiple modern and differentiated teaching and learning methods
and strategies that fit lesson objectives, allowing for a varied learning experiences for students, and promoting
assimilation in a sound teaching environment and educational system characterized by comprehensiveness
and equal opportunities.

9) Improving teachers’ conditions, raising their morale and promoting their professional abilities:

Qatar made sure to value teachers for their importance and the role they play in the educational process, by improving
their physical and moral situation, and enhancing their professional abilities. This interest accompanies teacher
throughout the educational process in Qatar. The National EFA Plan objectives stress the importance of promoting
the competences of teachers and administrators in the light of the latest educational and technical developments,
and improving teachers’ financial and social statuses. The Education and Training Sector Strategy included objectives
pertaining to the promotion of the professional abilities of the teaching workforce, meaning that all teachers and
administrators should have official or licensed teaching qualifications by 2016, through putting an into action efficient
plan to build, develop, and promote teachers’ professional abilities.
Ever since the initiative to develop teaching was launched in Qatar, it has been accompanied by an interest in preparing
and training teachers; a Career Development Office, subordinate to the SEC, was inaugurated, and offers a number of
educational and vocational services, such as:
- Providing preparation and training programs for those wishing to join the teaching workforce, and offering
support and assistance to new teachers.
- Professional development for teachers in education strategies, and in content area.
Additionally, autonomy is one of the principles of the Education for a New Era initiative, granting the opportunity for
each school to prepare and carry out programs to develop its educational staff’s competences in the fields of teaching
and education, and to use new techniques.
The SEC took on an educational orientation in professionalizing teaching, through setting professional criteria for
those who work in the field of teaching in Qatar. Those criteria help determine a wide range of abilities and knowledge
that teachers need to have in order to offer high quality teaching that supports and develops student learning.
In this light, a system that governs special measures for licensing those working in teaching was set up, along with a
strategy to accredit and reward individuals.
Furthermore, a Teachers Network in Qatar was set, aiming at improving teachers’ performances and abilities.
 155 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

On another hand, the alleviating of administrative burdens from teachers during the school day was taken into account,
as was the determination of the number of school periods that would help teachers be creative in their teaching process.

10) Harnessing new ICTs to help meet EFA goals:

The State of Qatar has adopted scientific and technological policies focusing on building a knowledge economy. This
was starkly evident in the Qatar Vision 2030, and in the Qatar National Development Strategy 2011-2016, which led to
interest in new technology and information and communication means. In the Education and Training Sector Strategy
2011-2016, many projects related to that field, and in the service of education, were adopted, such as:
• The 4.1 Project –an administrative strategy to use ICTs to improve the learning environment.
• The 6.1 Project –a comprehensive database for education and training, aiming at establishing an integral
database for information and planning in the sector of education and training.
The National EFA plan (2001) also included a number of objectives represented as:
• The development of the use of computers as a content area and as a learning aid.
• Mechanizing school administrations and linking it to the internet through programs that computerize
administrative information and links it to the internet.
Going from these objectives and projects, there were many qualitative accomplishments in terms of using ICTs in the
educational process to reach the EFA goals, such as:

10-1 e-Learning

A strategic plan was adopted in order to provide electronic applications and solutions through an
e-learning project so that students can master the learning process at any time. It also provides an exciting
learning environment, and contributes to finding developed and varied teaching methods that go in hand
with the characteristics of society, and meet the needs of students. This project is built on providing all
students with a device, providing e-content for content area, and providing an e-library; it also includes
an education management system (for both students and teachers), and an electronic assessment system.
The e-learning applications will be used in an integral manner to reach the following objectives:
• Helping the members of the school community communicate and receive the information that helps them
make decisions
• Allowing parents to communicate with the school and follow their children’s performances
• Providing decision makers with performance indicators
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• Providing authoring tools for teachers

• Providing online learning for students
• Providing continuous assessment of students in the classroom
• Providing a course management system
• Allowing students and parents to learn and to access learning sources anytime, anywhere.

10-2 Electronic services and facilities for both students and teachers

Services provided by the implementation of the LMS:

For students:
• E-homework solving
• Permanent and safe email for each student
• Communication between students and teachers via private chat
• Personal student agenda for noting tasks
• Student personal file execution
• Providing e-content for a number of programs
• Providing a tablet for each students (e-book bag)
• Providing a service for checking general secondary results through the SEC website
• Providing electronic access to the libraries of schools which have carried out the project.

For teachers:
• Electronic submission and correction of homework and tests
• A safe and permanent email address for each teacher
• Communication between students and teachers via private chat
• A network for creative teachers to communicate with independent school teachers in order to exchange experiences and
course content
• Personal agenda for noting tasks.

10-3 Developing school networks to correspond to e-learning project

• Follow-up and commissioning companies to ensure maintenance, repair and rental of photocopiers for independent
 157 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

schools.
• Building the ninth generation school networks.
• Updating electronic equipment in a number of independent schools equipped with their own technological devices.

10-4 Online registration and enrollment of students:

The students e-registration system was put in place to allow parents to register their children in independent schools
online through a dedicated website. The “Where is my school?” system was established allowing parents to determine
which school their children belong to geographically.

10-5 Automation of programs and electronic systems

The SEC was keen on renovating all of its transactions and procedures whether in schools, society or SEC bodies
through electronic systems; the aim is to improve the quality of delivered services: system of school follow-up and
monitoring, financial and administrative systems as well as system for human resources. Services were improved to be
of higher quality, user friendly, pursuant to approved policies, time-efficient, effective and expeditious.
Supreme Education Council 158

11) Regular follow-up of progress towards achieving EFA goals and implementing national, regional
and international strategies

For Qatar, education is a fundamental human right and a key element to achieving sustainable development and
laying the foundations of peace and stability among countries.
As such, political, developmental and educational documents of the State reaffirm the principle of EFA. That is clearly
embodied in the second article of the general strategy for economic and social development of the State of Qatar of
1996. The document stressed the importance of compulsory and free basic education for all citizens throughout the
different stages, in order to ensure the human capital development.
Qatar has participated alongside other countries in the World Education Forum held in Dakar, Senegal in 2000. In
light of the forum decisions, a national EFA plan was elaborated in Qatar, based on the six EFA goals, by virtue of the
Ministerial Decree no. 49 of 2001, which stipulates the creation of a national committee with the following tasks:
1) Mobilizing technical, administrative, human and physical resources to harness all kinds of public and private support and
the support of international organizations and regional funds so as to promote plans to achieve Qatar’s education goals.
2) Reviewing the designed plans and currently applied strategies, and determining whether they’re still relevant to the
goals and ambitions of the 21th century.
3) Coordinating with relevant governmental and non-governmental bodies and sectors, to reach a common vision of the
priorities of EFA goals in Qatar.
4) Elaborating action plans within set timetable and financial cost, and linking them to reaching EFA goals.
5) Preparing a National EFA Plan for the State of Qatar with an appropriate timetable, while taking into consideration the
benefits, obstacles and difficulties of previous plans.
6) Promoting the role of local media in introducing EFA goals and plans, and keeping up with the achievements of other
countries.
Qatar has also participated in all regional and international EFA events. It kept in touch with the Beirut and Doha
UNESCO offices throughout the period of completing the EFA goals (2001-2015) through the Qatar National Commission
for Education, Culture and Science and through a national coordinator designated for this purpose.
A number of the Education and Training Sector Strategy (ETSS) objectives and projects were in line with the EFA goals,
comprising a number of crucial and periodically reviewed performance indicators to ensure reaching ETSS goals.
In 2007, Qatar prepared the EFA mid-decade assessment report that highlights the progress towards achieving EFA
goals in Qatar.
The different aspects and procedures of monitoring education process have garnered great importance through the
159 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015
Supreme Education Council 160

SEC committees, offices and administrations, especially the education and evaluation institutes, and through periodic
reports on annual achievements in light of the projected goals. In this context, a report is prepared and submitted to
the Cabinet and published in an official document related to the State’s accomplishments.

12) Relying on existing mechanisms to speed-up the progress towards achieving EFA goals

A set of existing mechanisms related to the education process was marked by the promotion of EFA opportunities,
contributing to a significant leap forward towards achieving EFA goals. The Supreme Education Council (SEC) operated
according to the national Education and Training Sector Strategy (ETSS), an integral part of Qatar’s National Development
Strategy, and in line with Qatar Vision 2030.
The ETSS comprises a number of projects and goals for the promotion of education quality by aligning K-12 education
curricula with higher education, job skills, various students’ needs as well as with the effective and optimum use of
Information and Communication Technology (ICT), in areas related to students, teachers, trainers and education
management, including (learning management system LMS; developing electronic content for content areas; designing
the e-school bag) and promoting Qatari national values, improving knowledge of Arab and Islamic cultures, ensuring
varied paths to technical and vocational education and training (TVET), enhancing parents and local community
participation in education, on-going vocational development and continuous training for all education staff and
preparing students for knowledge-based economy through high quality programs in post-secondary education.
Qatar invests heavily in the education and training sector, where education spending represents 10.8% of government
spending.
High levels of spending are attributed to the lack of compulsory tuitions for students, the costs of school buildings,
services, facilities and amenities.
In order to deliver the main requirements for ETSS success, an administrative unit was established to support the
management and implementation of said strategy projects. It comprises a steering committee chaired by His Excellency
the Minister of Education, a project management office to provide support and guidance in project management, and
a team to run the projects of the Education and Training Strategy, in addition to specialized teams for different projects
led by projects managers.
In addition to the SEC initiatives, many partners in the education and training sector and partnerships in common
sectors, contribute directly or indirectly to the implementation of the ETSS. Among the SEC’s partners in this respect:
Qatar University, Qatar Foundation, College of the North Atlantic - Qatar, the Department of Social Sciences, Ministry
of Interior, Qatar Aeronautical College, Qatar Petroleum, Stenden University Qatar, and the Ministry of Information and
Communications Technology.
161 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015
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 163 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Part V
Relevance of EFA framework
Supreme Education Council 164

Part V
Relevance of EFA framework

Article 1 of the Jomtien Declaration, Thailand of March 1995, stipulated in regards to EFA that: “Every person - child,
youth and adult - shall be able to benefit from educational opportunities designed to meet their basic learning needs.” The
constitutional documents, the Qatar National Vision 2030 and education and development documents of the State of
Qatar reaffirm the principle of EFA. Given the EFA shortcomings in many countries of the world, the Dakar Framework
of Action, Education for All (April 2000), called upon all countries to elaborate national EFA plans based on the six EFA
goals.
The State of Qatar has sought to achieve and commit to EFA goals since adopting them. The National EFA Plan (2003)
was elaborated to be in harmony and complementary to other national education plans. A national EFA coordinator
was appointed and national teams were formed to prepare plans and reports and supervise their implementation. The
State of Qatar participated in a number of meetings, seminars and workshops at the national, regional and international
levels and was committed to submit national reports such as the EFA Mid-Decade Assessment (EFA MDA) Report.
Some of the most prominent improvements and additions introduced by the plan and its programs to the different
education aspects in Qatar, include the following:
• The elaboration of a standardized international framework for all UNESCO member states, governing their efforts
to attain education goals and allowing the exchange of pioneering expertise and experiences in education.
• Stressing the importance of the concept of accountability, monitoring and supervision to develop, promote and
achieve quality in line with international indicators.
• Building local capacity and competences by offering a number of training workshops pertaining especially to
statistics, as well as collecting and analyzing data, based on performance indicators.
• Giving more importance to data and statistics, to their accuracy, chronology and documentation, and
subsequently employing them in local, regional and international reports, education reports or Human
Development Reports (HDR).
• Highlighting education development initiatives and programs in Qatar.
• Allowing further participation and exchange of expertise on the national level through the reporting team,
and internationally, through meetings and seminars where experiences and pioneering initiatives in terms of
education quality and quality improvement are shared.
 165 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Fortunately, EFA goals were in line with the fundamental objectives of the Qatar Vision 2030, since they both aim
at achieving high quality education and improving education outcome, expanding infrastructure and enforcing free
and compulsory education. The Qatar National Vision 2030 is even more ambitious for emphasizing on values and the
preservation of heritage, encouraging youth to create, innovate and develop capacities, linking education to sports
and culture by participating in a wide range of cultural and sport activities. It also encompasses scientific research and
funding, based on Public Private Partnerships, in collaboration with specialized international bodies and prestigious
international research centers.
Supreme Education Council 166
 167 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Part VI
Post 2015 Horizon
Supreme Education Council 168

Part VI
Post 2015 Horizon
In the State of Qatar, education has encountered several challenges and issues that were brought to light following
the analysis of the current situation of education and training in the country through the Qatar National Development
Strategy (NDS), and the Education and Training Sector Strategy (ETSS) that aimed at overcoming the rough challenges
faced by the education and training sector. Of these challenges: weak education achievement in Mathematics, Sciences,
Arabic and English languages; feeble awareness of the value of education; aversion to the teaching profession; and the
rising numbers of enrolled students in light of the State’s openness and economic, industrial and urban development.
A review was conducted to assess the progress in implementing the Education and Training Sector Strategy (ETSS)
and the achievements and challenges of 2013 in the scope of achieving the six EFA goals. The Supreme Education
Council (SEC) has achieved most of the six EFA goals and implemented a number of ETSS projects, designed to achieve
the intended sector-wide results through a comprehensive review of the national curriculum K-12 and establishing a
new preliminary national curricula framework; teaching Arabic as well as Qatari and Islamic history in private schools;
widening the innovative use of ICTs; setting up a national qualification framework; increasing school and university
enrolment rates; improving student results in national and international examinations, even though there is a need for
additional progress; and students and parents’ motivation as to the value of education. Two additional new initiatives
are required: providing quality early childhood care and education (ECCE) and, ensuring that students acquire the
appropriate literacy and numeracy skills to their age in the first 3 grades and to their transition to the following education
cycle.
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) reports, especially the third report of 2013, show that the State of Qatar
has made a huge progress. It was highly ranked in the Human Development Index (HDI), thanks to the wise Qatari
leadership’s guidance and strong support for human development, reemphasizing its importance in all local and
international fora and events.
Qatar ranked first in the Arab world and 36th globally in HDI. As previously mentioned, Qatar figures among countries
with high human development indicators. Qatar HDI was 0.834; it ranked 117th globally for gender equity index (GEI)
and non-discrimination. GDP per capita increased to 77,987 USD. A remarkable progress was achieved in the health
sector, as to immunization and curbing the spread of infectious diseases and epidemics. In the education sector, literacy
rates improved (96.3%) as well as for gross enrolment rate in primary (103%) and secondary (94%) education. Qatar
achieved high employment rates (89.9%) and low unemployment rates1.
(1) Human Development Report 2013 WWW.UN.ORG/AR/ESA
Arabstates.undp.org/development/Human
 169 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

In what follows, a presentation of the 6 Dakar goals, achievements, challenges and future plans:

Goal 1

Expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most
vulnerable and disadvantaged children.
Qatar has crossed many important milestones in ECCE. The enrollment rate increased more than two folds (266%)
between 2000/2001 and 2011/2012. The number of kindergarten school buildings increased, due to Qatar’s commitment
to make kindergarten an integral part of the education scale. Indeed, it enacted the Strategic Early Education Plan,
established kindergartens and ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), showing its keenness and
commitment to all international conventions.
This goal encountered a number of challenges, including:
- Establishing the adequate number of kindergartens to accommodate children in this stage, especially since the
SEC is oriented toward making it part of compulsory education.
- Providing and qualifying national capacity to work in kindergartens.
- Some parents’ lack of awareness about this stage and its importance in forming their children’s personality and
capacities.
In order to face these challenges and achieve the targeted progress, the Education and Training Sector Strategy (ETSS)
took into account:
1) ECCE initiative, aiming at achieving the short term goals of an inclusive national approach to children’s education,
as follows:
- Developing a “foundation” education curriculum for children under the age of 6, while guarantying the
appropriate conditions, trained professionals, on-going professional development and monitoring and
assessment.
- Expanding the SEC’s early education team to provide better support for current and future kindergartens.
- Investing in the professional development of the early education team, especially their training and
mentoring capacity in terms of developing literacy and numeracy skills.
- Establishing the first SEC affiliated Center for early years education for children under 4, to act as a “learning
laboratory”, providing information that could be used in similar circumstances in the future. (Project under
implementation).
Supreme Education Council 170

2) Compulsory education in kindergartens and secondary education, in order to raise the net enrolment rate in all
educational stages.
3) Modernizing curricula K-12: in order to implement a qualitative national curriculum, a new high level curriculum
for general education was developed. It should be implemented and piloted in all public schools in 2017.
4) A plan for developing the work force in the education sector and to develop institutions, to enhance teachers’
professional capacities, so that all teachers and trainers would obtain official teaching qualifications or licenses
by 2016.
 171 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

Goal 2
Ensuring that by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances and those
belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to, and complete, free and compulsory primary education
of good quality.
The State has exerted tremendous efforts to ensure universal compulsory education through a vast array of mechanisms
such as the compulsory education law and procedures, policies, strategies and executive plans to develop and improve
said education.
Qatar has also made remarkable progress and achieved significant results in terms of the second EFA goal: net and
gross enrolment rates (NER & GER) increased, repetition rates decreased; retention rate until 5th grade and promotion
rates improved, reflecting an improved internal efficiency of the education sector; the ratio of qualified teachers and
teachers with qualifications increased; education spending grew. We notice therefore that Qatar has achieved most of
goal 2 targets in all relevant indicators.
Some challenges still hinder primary education such as the aversion of male Qataris to the teaching profession, lack
of students’ motivation to learning and the need for more specialized training programs to enhance teachers’ teaching
qualifications.
The ETSS 2011- 2016 took the above into account in the following programs and projects:
1) The literacy and numeracy skills initiatives: this initiative was considered vital since these skills are fundamental
for students’ future success. This initiative aimed at:
- Preparing learning frameworks for literacy and numeracy skills.
- Reviewing the standards and assessment requirements of mathematics, Arabic and English curricula, and
Keeping pace with the framework and requirements of international examinations of literacy and numeracy
skills.
- Piloting the Numeracy Improvement Program in six primary schools.
- Piloting the Literacy Improvement Program in six primary schools Testing the program promoting literacy in
primary schools.
2) Support the promotion of Qatari values: this program aims at designing and launching education programs that
instill national values in students.
3) A plan to develop education staff and institutions: this project aims at promoting the professional capacities of
teachers and school workers, as well as setting an effective plan to build and develop the labor force, education
institutions and training professionals.
Supreme Education Council 172

4) Establishing an appropriate education infrastructure to increase schools capacity of absorbing the growing
number of students, and the estimated future growth, and to enhance the quality of school buildings.
5) The updated national curriculum K-12, aiming at designing and implementing quality national curricula and
enhancing training programs in line with the National Professional Standards.
6) Aligning educational programs with students’ needs aims to increase the capacity of educational institutions to
meet diverse students’ needs, based on students’ abilities, orientations and gifts.
7) A comprehensive outreach and motivation plan aiming at encouraging students to learn and improve their
education levels, while enhancing communication with students and their parents.
8) A specialized education system to ensure quality education to disabled students and students with learning
difficulties by increasing the number of schools equipped with the necessary infrastructure for disabled students,
and empowering special institutions and a number of specialists to work with students with special educational
needs (SEN).

Goal 3:
Ensure that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met, through equitable access to
appropriate learning and life-skills programs.
Qatar gives great importance to raising youth literacy rates, developing secondary education, improving and
diversifying enrollment rates in secondary education. Literacy rates (15-24) amounted to 99% in 2013. Gross enrollment
rate reached 98.6% in 2012/2013 with a 9 percentage point increase compared to 2000/20001. Qatar developed
technical and vocational schools and enhanced post-secondary technical education; it also built partnerships with the
private sector and semi-governmental bodies. Despite Qatar’s tireless efforts, vocational and technical education still
faces a number of challenges:
- Youth’s reluctance to enroll in technical and vocational education.
- Lack of technical and vocational education schools for girls.
To overcome these challenges and achieve Qatar’s ambitions and vision, the strategy included a set of outcomes
aiming at raising the level of secondary as well as vocational and technical education:
1) Developing an organizational model for TVET and required capacities with the following outcome:
- A TVET supervisory body.
- An accreditation and certification model.
 173 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

2) Developing an organizational framework to align TVET with the education and training sector and labor market
needs . This outcome includes the following outputs:
- The National Qualifications Framework.
- Professional Standards and relevant supervisory body.
3) TVET programs are consistent and aligned with the needs of the Qatari society and those of the labor market. It
includes the following:
- A plan to develop distinguished programs for TVET to meet the labor market needs.
- A plan to establish partnerships with the business sector to develop TVET data.
4) Promote awareness of the importance of TVET with the following outputs:
- A plan to increase awareness about TVET programs.
- Efficient integration of TVET in career counseling to increase participation and reduce dropout rates.

Goal 4:
Achieve a 50 per cent improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for women, and equitable
access to basic and continuing education for all adults.
The State of Qatar has achieved a remarkable progress in terms of adult education and literacy. Illiteracy rates dropped
to 2.5% in 2013 for the 15 years and above age category, compared to 11.3% in 2001. In contrast, literacy rates rose to
approximately 100% for the 15 to 24 years old with 99%, and to 97.5% for the 15 years and above. The gender equity
index (GEI) shows no sign of gender disparity. Indeed, the index is sometimes in favor of females.
Despite the accomplished progress and achievements, adult education still faces some challenges related to quality:
- Providing different learning resources that suit the approach of diversity of knowledge-sources.
- Training adult education teachers in line with appropriate and modern teaching methods.
- Providing technical and educational services and facilities.
ETSS comprised sector-wide outcomes on adult education programs, “providing a wide range of basic adult education
programs”. Such outcomes included one output: flexible adult literacy programs and providing training and qualification
opportunities.
Supreme Education Council 174

Goal 5:
Eliminate gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005, and achieving gender equality
in education by 2015, with a focus on ensuring girls’ full and equal access to and achievement in basic
education of good quality.
The State of Qatar was keen to achieve gender equality and non-discrimination in line with its constitution, especially
Articles 18 and 34, Qatar Vision 2030 and the Emiri Decree no. 28 of 2009 that approved Qatar’s adherence to the CEDAW.
Qatar has clearly achieved all its goals pertaining to eliminating gender disparity and discrimination. Indeed, some
indicators were in favor of females and there are no difficulties or challenges in this regard since all legislations, policies
and laws support equal access to education to all citizens without discrimination.

Goal 6:
Improving all aspects of the quality of education and ensuring excellence of all so that recognized and
measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially in literacy, numeracy and essential life
skills.
Improving quality education is among the key priorities of the wise Qatari leadership and education authorities.
Qatar has achieved a remarkable step forward in education services, facilities and programs, as well as the different
aspects of the education process, most importantly:
1) School buildings:
Providing all related services and facilities such as laboratories, outdoor and indoor playgrounds, libraries and
health facilities, as well as all safety and security conditions.
2) Curricula and textbooks:
Developing curriculum standards for the content areas and preparing curricula-based textbooks, in cooperation
with international think tanks.
3) Advisory committees:
Establish advisory committees of members from the education system and other stakeholders, teachers committee,
certified teachers and principals committee, board of trustees, in addition to councils, such as parents and students
councils.
 175 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

4) Professional Development
Providing diverse training programs to all workers in the educational system, in addition to specialized programs.
Professional Standards for Teachers and School leaders were also developed and training programs on such
standards were provided to target groups.
5) Improve school performance and accountability:
Improve school performance and accountability through periodic (triennial) and special review of independent
schools, the national accreditation of private schools, and school performance report cards.
6) Outstanding schools:
Attracting outstanding schools started in 2007. The first 2 schools, the DeBakey High School for Health Professions
and the International School of London, were inaugurated in 2008. The Sherborne School and the Spanish
International School opened in 2009 and 2013 respectively.

Educational Aims
Qatar aims at improving student performance in national and international examinations, as one of the qualitative
aspects that ensure excellence to all students through joint development plans between the Education and Evaluation
Institutes and the monitoring student performance throughout the year. It should be noted that a considerable
improvement in student performance was recorded.
We continue to emphasize the quality of education and the need to improve it in order to achieve Qatar Vision 2030
and ETSS 2011-2016. Despite the progress made, this goal should still tackle the following challenges:
- Improving and enhancing the level of education outputs.
- Raising the proficiency of teachers and school administrations.
- Enhancing students learning motivation and drive.
- Increasing parents participation in the educational process.
- Enhancing students’ basic skills (literacy and numeracy).
Consequently, following the mid-term assessment of the ETSS, the Supreme Education Council set a list of projects
based on results, outcome, goals and starting points pursuant to Qatar National Development Strategy 2011-2016.
Supreme Education Council 176
 177 Education For All: Country Report 2000 - 2015

References
01) Qatar National Vision 2030, General Secretariat for Development Planning (GSDP), Doha, September 2013.
02) National EFA Plan, Ministry of Education, Doha, December 2003.
03) Qatar “EFA” Mid-Decade Assessment (EFA MDA) report, Ministry of Education, Doha, August 2007.
04) Qatar National Development Strategy 2011-2016, General Secretariat for Development Planning (GSDP), Doha,
First Edition, March 2011.
05) Qatar National Report, Ministry of Education and Higher Education, Doha, September 2008.
06) National Report on the Development of Education in the State of Qatar in light of the Education Development Plan
in the Arab World 2005-2009, Supreme Education Council, Doha, May 2010.
07) Sustainable Development Indicators in Qatar 2013, General Secretariat for Development Planning (GSDP), Doha,
December 2013.
08) Qatar Annual Education Statistics Report 2012–2013, Supreme Education Council, Doha 2014.
09) Supreme Education Council Achievements, Supreme Education Council, Doha, June 2012.
10) The Supreme Education Council Achievements and Future Projects for the academic year 2013/2014, Supreme
Education Council, Doha, June 2014.
11) Education and Training Sector Strategy (ETSS) 2011- 2016, General Secretariat for Development Planning (GSDP)
and Supreme Education Council (SEC), Doha, May 2011.
12) Universal Periodic Review Mechanism, Qatar, Second National Report, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, May 2014
13) Education and Training Sector Strategy (ETSS) Mid-term review, Supreme Education Council, General Secretariat
for Development Planning (GSDP), Doha, May 2014.
14) Enhancing the Capacities of Qatari Youth - Integrating Youth in the Development Process, Qatar’s Third National
Human Development Report, General Secretariat for Development Planning, Doha, January 2012.
15) Website of the Supreme Education Council (SEC) www.sec.gov.qa
16) Human Development Report (HDR) 2013 www.un.org/ar/esa
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