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Qatar

Special Reading Initiatives

In conjunction with Qatar’s participation in PIRLS 2006, the Ministry of Education and Higher Education organized a contest among the primary grades for outstanding performance in Arabic language literacy. The main objective of the contest was to improve the performance of Grade 3 students on basic Arabic reading competencies. Following PIRLS 2011, the Evaluation Institute of the Ministry of Education and Higher Education launched book fairs, reading projects, and activities to encourage reading fluency. These initiatives were designed to highlight the importance of reading; improve students’ reading aptitude; and encourage students to read, tell, and write stories. In December 2010, the Ministry of Education and Higher Education and Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing collaborated on the first Doha International Children’s Book Festival, which introduced children to the book industry and allowed them to spend time discussing books with authors, reading, and painting.8 The Qatari National Library, Dar Al Kutub, also organizes a number of events that support literacy (e.g., book fairs). Additional reading initiatives include:

  • The program My Library is the Heart of My School—This program, adopted as part of the reading program by the Office of Her Excellency Shiekha Hind Bin Hamad Al-Thani, aims to foster the value of books and to promote the culture of reading by providing students with two special reading classes per month. The coordinators of the Learning Resources Center cooperate with Arabic teachers to select the stories for the program, conduct analyses of them, and organize appropriate activities for students based on them.
  • The Internet Safety Project (Hazeen)—The IT department of Educational Inspection, in coordination with the Ministry of Transport and Communications and the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology (ictQATAR), supports and monitors the implementation of Hazeen, or the Internet Safety Project, in all schools. This project uses multimedia consistent with the standards of the Arabic, English, and Values Framework for Grades 1 to 12.
  • The Spelling Contest—Held for six consecutive years, this annual competition aims to enable students to use Arabic vocabulary correctly when writing, reading, and speaking. The competition is aligned with the national curriculum standards, with seven standards selected from the third grade and nine standards from the fourth grade.
  • Literacy Numeracy (Maharati) Programme—This project aims to enhance literacy and numeracy skills, and to enable students to achieve the basic level of literacy and numeracy skills in the primary stage. Its subject areas include Arabic, mathematics, and science, and cover students in Grades 1 to 6.