How Qatar’s education sector is equipping students for the future

Decades of concerted investment in education have helped Qatar create a qualified workforce equipped with the skills needed to succeed in growing professions. The country’s literacy rate in 2019 was 99.2% of individuals 15 years old and above, while the gross enrolment rates for primary, preparatory and secondary education are all around 100% – a reflection of the mission to provide education for all.

Education, research and training are key components of Qatar National Vision 2030, the country’s long-term framework to build a knowledge-based, sustainable and diversified economy. To do so, one goal of the vision is to increase the number of educational facilities from 354 schools in 2012/13 to 482 in 2018/19 and 524 in 2023/24. In line with the growth set out under the roadmap, the contribution of the education sector to GDP increased from 1.3% in 2012/13 to 3.3% in 2018/19.

Qatar has worked to position itself as a regional and global leader in education. In December 2021 Doha hosted the 10th World Innovation Summit for Education, an annual event that brings together leaders in education, technology and economic development. Organised by Qatar Foundation (QF), the summit featured more than 300 speakers and aimed to address global challenges in the education sphere, including the loss of access to education for marginalised youth as a result of Covid-19-related lockdowns.

History

Qatar’s formal education system was established by the Education Law of 1954, and in 1973 an Amiri decree was issued to create the first tertiary institution, the College of Education. The founding of Qatar University followed in 1977 with four colleges: education, humanities and social sciences, Islamic studies and science, and sharia and law.

A series of reforms in the early 2000s modernised the K-12 segment in terms of structure and teaching practices. Education shifted from the traditional rote learning, teacher-centred system into one that emphasised critical thinking, inquiry and discovery. Standards for student performance and school curricula were implemented at this time. For the latter, curricula reform focused on Arabic, English, science and mathematics, as well as the management structure of schools. The Supreme Education Council (SEC) was created in November 2002, which developed and implemented the sector reforms.

Oversight

In 2016 the SEC merged with the Ministry of Education to become the Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MEHE), which is the government entity responsible for developing and regulating the sector. It has oversight authority for both public and private K-12 schools, as well as higher education institutions. It also licenses private schools; provides scholarships to Qatari students; recruits, trains and licenses public school teachers; and sets curricula standards. The MEHE is headed by Buthaina bint Ali Al Jabr Al Nuaimi, who was appointed in October 2021.

The MEHE is tasked with implementing the Education and Training Sector Strategy (ETSS) 2018-22, which uses an outcome-based rather than project-based approach to implementation. It comprises five pillars: enrolment, achievement and implementation, manpower, citizenship and values, and institutional development and governance. It outlines key performance indicators for each pillar and academic level, including creating a centralised database for education and training; developing more e-services provided by the MEHE; increasing the number of early childhood teachers with recognised qualifications; improving performance in third-, sixth- and ninth-grade exams to 70% or higher; and boosting the number of students who pursue science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). The strategy also aims to expand the role of the private sector in the provision of education.

QF plays an active role in the education system as well. The non-profit organisation was created in 1995 with a donation from former Amir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani and Sheikha Moza bint Nasser. It is composed of 50 organisations, and aims to leverage its ecosystem to enable people to solve current and future challenges. QF’s flagship initiative is Education City, a 12-sq-km campus in Al Rayyan that hosts local and international universities. These include Hamad bin Khalifa University, Texas A&M University at Qatar (TAMU-Q), Weill Cornell Medicine-Qatar and Northwestern University in Qatar, as well as HEC Paris in Qatar, Georgetown University in Qatar, Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar and Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar.

Structure

Education is free for all Qatari nationals from preschool to university, and public schools are generally reserved for citizens. Growing expatriate populations in Doha, Al Wakrah and Al Rayyan in recent decades have led to a rise in demand for education in those municipalities. This coincided with an expanding pool of private schools, many of which provide foreign language courses and diverse curricula – the International Baccalaureate, US, UK, Indian, Canadian, French and Pakistani are among the most popular. The entry of renowned foreign institutions has bolstered the quality of education, and helped to align teaching practices and curricula in both public and private schools with international standards.

Education in Qatar is divided into five levels: pre-primary for children up to the age of five; primary for grades one to six; preparatory for grades seven to nine; secondary for grades 10 to 12; and higher education. Education is compulsory at the primary and preparatory levels, ensuring children receive at least nine years of schooling, although many students pursue secondary schooling and higher education.

There are four categories of schools: government schools, which follow the nationally designed curriculum; international schools, which apply curricula like the International Baccalaureate; community schools that follow the curricula of institutions in an expatriate community’s home country; and private Arabic schools, which fall partially under the purview of the MEHE. There are also child development centres tailored for students with special needs that offer speech language and occupational therapy. These are open to both nationals and expatriates.

At the beginning of the 2021/22 academic year there were 32 higher education institutions in Qatar: 10 public schools, nine private schools, eight QF-affiliated schools and five military institutions. In addition, Qatar hosts 33 research centres focusing on the environment and energy, health, entrepreneurship, social and humanitarian issues, and innovation.

Public Education

There were 124,628 students enrolled in government K-12 schools in the 2019/20 academic year, up 15.4% from 107,986 in 2015/16, according to the most recent statistics issued by the Planning and Statistics Authority (PSA). Of those enrolled in 2019/20, 64,857 were female and 59,771 were male. Primary school students comprised the largest cohort, at 58,162, followed by preparatory students (29,120) secondary students (28,602) and pre-primary students (8744).

Public universities, meanwhile, hosted 27,777 students in 2019/20, up 26.7% from 21,917 in 2015/16. Females far outnumbered males at government universities, with 21,201 females in attendance (76% of the total) compared to 6576 males (24%) in 2019/20. The large number of females pursuing higher education is having positive effects on wider society. “Thanks to Qatar’s advanced education system, society is becoming more open and sophisticated. Education is playing a vital role in addressing the gender gap and creating a more inclusive labour market,” Clyde Wilcox, interim dean of Georgetown University in Qatar, told OBG.

The top-five academic tracks in 2019/20 were arts and sciences (7346 students), community college (5044 students), administration and economics (4655 students), engineering (3230 students) and education (2395 students). Qataris accounted for 71.2% of the student body, while the next-largest nationality represented was Egyptian, at 4.5%.

Private Schooling

Although there were there more students enrolled in private K-12 schools than public ones in 2019/20, according to the PSA report, the rate at which enrolment at private institutions grew was nearly equal to that in the public sphere.

There were 208,030 students in private K-12 schools in the 2019/20 school year, a 15.2% increase from 180,648 in 2015/16. Of those attending private schools in 2019/20, 97,610 were female and 110,420 were male. As in the public segment, primary schools accounted for the largest share of total enrollees, at 103,726. However, pre-primary was the second-largest level in the private segment, with 46,939 students, followed by preparatory (33,658 students) and secondary (23,707 students).

Private universities, for their part, taught 9335 students in 2019/20, up 28.3% from 6751 in 2015/16. The gender ratio at private universities was more even than at public institutions, with 5068 females and 4267 males in attendance in 2019/20.

Staffing

In the 2019/20 school year there were 28,154 teachers employed in Qatar’s K-12 education system, instructing a student body of 332,658, according to the PSA. Teachers were split fairly evenly between government and private schools, at 14,622 and 13,532, respectively. The largest share – or 13,131 of teachers – worked at the primary level, followed by the secondary (5644), preparatory (5004) and pre-primary (4375) levels.

Teachers are largely foreign and female: 85.9%, or 24,190, that year were non-Qatari, while around 72.2%, or 20,321, were female. The government also employed 11,027 administrators, while the private sector employed 5998. Public K-12 schools had a lower student-to-teacher ratio, at around 8.5:1, while the rate stood at 15.4:1 among private K-12 schools.

The number of teachers in private schools rose by around 20% from 11,201 in the 2015/16 academic year to 13,532 in 2019/20. Most teachers were employed in primary schools in 2019/20 (6123), followed by pre-primary (3426), secondary (3020) and preparatory (1863). Of the 19,530 individuals employed by private schools across teaching and administrative positions, 14,777 (75.7%) were female and nearly all (19,415, 99.4%) were foreign nationals.

Public colleges and universities, meanwhile, employed 1468 individuals in the 2019/20 school year, 1140 of whom were non-Qatari and 328 of whom were citizens. Around half, or 794 individuals, were employed as professors, while 374 were lecturers, 290 were teaching assistants and 10 were top-level administrative personnel. Qataris accounted for the largest proportion of teachers at public colleges and universities, at 21.81%, or 318 individuals, followed by Egyptians (9.26%, 135 teachers), Jordanians (9.12%, 133 teachers), US citizens (9.05%, 132 teachers) and Canadians (6.99%, 102 teachers).

Private colleges and universities, for their part, employed 2050 teachers and administrative staff that same year. Of this total, 1116 were administrative staff, 505 were professors, 392 were lecturers and 37 were teaching assistants. Non-Qataris numbered 1909, while 141 were nationals.

Budget

Education is regarded as key to realising Qatar National Vision 2030 goals, and the proportion of government spending on the sector has stayed at around 9-10% since the roadmap was published. Indeed, education received 10% of the annual budget in 2016, when it was allocated QR20.4bn ($5.6bn). The next year QR20.6bn ($5.65bn), or 10.4% of the total, was earmarked for education, but in 2018 and 2019 the figure fell to QR19bn ($5.2bn) and QR19.2bn ($5.3bn), or 9.4% and 9.2%, respectively. The authorities increased spending on the sector to QR22.1bn ($6.1bn), or 10.5% of the total budget, in 2020, but spending fell again in 2021 to QR17.4bn ($4.8bn), or 8.9% of the budget. The 2021 amount included financing for the expansion and development of existing schools, as well as investment in e-learning programmes made necessary by the pandemic.

In December 2021 the Ministry of Finance released the budget for the 2022 fiscal year, based on an average oil price of $55 per barrel. The QR204.3bn ($56.1bn) budget projected government revenue of QR196bn ($53.8bn) – a 22.4% increase from 2021 – and a deficit of QR8.3bn ($2.3bn). Education was allocated QR17.8bn ($4.9bn), or 8.7% of the total. Qatar has also committed to establishing 45 schools across six packages under the Qatar Schools Public-Private Partnership Development Programme. The programme began in 2019 and is set to run through 2023, with schools established under a design-build-finance-operate-maintain-transfer model.

Testing

Qatari authorities have prioritised improving students’ performance on international tests as a way to ensure that children are receiving a quality education. Students in Qatar take both the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) test and the Programme for International Student Assessment. The National Development Strategy (NDS) 2018-22 is the second five-year plan launched to support Qatar National Vision 2030, and it places an emphasis on improving Qatar’s TIMSS ranking. In 2015 – the benchmark year for the NDS 2018-22 – Qatari students ranked lower than anticipated. While the international average score at each level was 500 that year, fourth graders in Qatar averaged 439 in maths and 436 in science, while eighth graders averaged 437 in maths and 457 in science.

After the publication of the 2015 scores, the MEHE issued a plan to improve performance by focusing on three factors: academics, awareness and motivation. Each category had several goals, including enhancing student performance by aligning classroom activities with international testing targets; raising awareness about the importance of the assessments; and honouring high-performing schools and students on Education Excellence Day. These efforts are steadily paying off: on the most recent TIMSS exam, conducted in 2019, Qatari fourth graders averaged 449 in both maths and science, while eighth graders averaged 443 in maths and 475 in science.

Scientific Specialisations

Increasing the number of students who pursue STEM disciplines is another of the MEHE’s priorities for meeting the goals of Qatar National Vision 2030. These efforts target students in both K-12 and higher education programmes. In July 2021 the MEHE announced an initiative aimed at boosting enrolment in science and technology among eighth- and ninth-grade students. The pilot programme covers 6000 male and female students across 10 schools, and includes a guidance framework that prepares students to join STEM programmes later in their academic careers.

Higher education administrators, meanwhile, are focusing on STEM as a critical element to creating a knowledge-based society with a workforce equipped with skills tailored for such an economy. Many universities are focusing on not only attracting students to STEM-related specialisations, but also integrating STEM material into other academic programmes – a trend mirrored around the world. Indeed, administrators have found that Qatari youth have shown a strong interest in STEM education. The goal moving forwards will be to encourage these young individuals to continue their careers in STEM-related fields.

Technical Training

In addition to STEM, officials are turning to technical and vocational education and training (TVET) as part of efforts to equip graduates with the skills needed for the job market. TVET programmes offer advanced technological training tailored to the local market, and graduates from Qatar’s TVET institutions receive both a specialised secondary diploma and an internationally recognised certificate issued by Australia’s Chisholm Institute.

In October 2021 the MEHE and the Chisholm Institute signed a partnership agreement under which the Australian organisation would implement a series of accredited technical programmes across Qatar. In particular, it will provide specialised Qatari schools with study materials, training and assessment strategy documents, guides for teachers and students, unit plans and performance-evaluation tools. “In view of technical education’s contribution to refining skills and meeting the needs of an ever-changing world, and in light of the rapid growth of the Qatari economy and industrial sector, technical education has been significantly expanded in the country,” Fawziya Al Khater, assistant undersecretary for educational affairs at the MEHE, told local press in August 2021. She underscored the role such institutions play in developing a knowledge-based economy by providing professionally oriented education.

Qatar is home to two government technical schools, one for male students and one for female students. The Qatar Technical School for Girls opened for the 2020/21 academic year to provide training to women in all sectors of the economy, as well as to further Qatarisation. Such advancements are expanding student choices and aligning learning outcomes with workplace needs. “Education systems that combine equity with quality give the best outcomes for students. They secure an opportunity for every individual to gain the education and skills they need to grow and develop their communities,” Salem Al Naemi, president of University of Doha for Science and Technology, told OBG.

Outlook

A productive education ecosystem comprising a variety of curricula at public and private institutions is now firmly established in the country, backed by strong public funding and an emphasis on technology that saw the sector through the Covid-19 pandemic (see analysis). The long-term focus on STEM education and TVET – especially the opportunities given to female students in these areas – is positioning Qatari graduates as competitive assets in the labour market. Boosting scores on international tests will also solidify Qatar’s reputation for K-12 learning.