Like every developing country, Qatar too has its challenges in charting out educational reform. While there have been many positive outcomes, what the country clearly lacks is a culture of hard work and deep learning, and a respect for all professions; values that need to be instilled for education to flourish.

As parents, we have harrowing tales to recount of finding the best educational institution for our children. The issue compounds in countries like Qatar where there is a growing and a moving population and a wide range of private schools to choose from. After you have researched and found the educational curriculum that best suits your child, you realise that the school has already closed its admission process with its quota of student enrolment achieved. And then the process of matching the curriculum to your child's temperament starts again. The existing schools are all said to be filled to the limits set by the educational authorities but there are more schools in the pipeline that might reduce the gap in supply. Is there a demand-supply mismatch? How can the country compare its educational offering to what's out there?

"Although the number of schools has expanded from a total of 230 in 2005 to more than 350 in 2015, overall, the education sector has been struggling to keep pace with the rate of population growth. It is largely accepted that during the past few years, the demand for schools has far exceeded the supply." - Saumya Krishna, Senior Manager, Financial Advisory Services Deloitte & Touche

Going through the pages of history
At the behest of the Supreme Education Council (SEC), the RAND Corporation in 2001 undertook a broad-based examination of the nation's kindergarten through grade 12 (K-12) education system to propose a strategy for reform. RAND's analysis identified key system strengths and weaknesses, most of which were already known, and it suggested a system-changing reform. Since then the improvements have been immense. The RAND reform happened more than a decade and half ago, but where do we stand now? How has the country improved its educational offering? What are the methods by which you can quantify the efforts taken? These are some of the questions that Qatar Today tries to answer.

Global standards
The importance of education to the economics of the country is reiterated by one of the world's most influential figures in education, Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skills at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), says, "Your education today is your economy tomorrow. We can only grow ourselves out of bad economic conditions and, in the long run, that depends more than anything on equipping more people with better skills to collaborate, compete and connect in ways that drive our societies forward - and on using those skills productively. Ensuring that all people have a solid foundation of knowledge and skills must therefore be the central aim of the post-2015 education agenda."

But how does one quantify the educational standards of a country? Over the past decade, the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) has become the world's premier yardstick for evaluating the quality, equity and efficiency of school systems in providing young people with these skills. But the evidence base that PISA has produced goes well beyond statistical benchmarking. By identifying the characteristics of high-performing education systems, PISA allows governments and educators to identify effective policies that they can then adapt to their local contexts.

In 2012, when the last PISA was carried out, the top places in the rankings were dominated by Asian school systems - although China so far does not participate as a whole country, but is represented by high-performing cities such as Shanghai and Hong Kong. Qatar's performance is among the lowest of all the countries, just above Indonesia and Peru.

Finland has always been one of the top performers in the PISA ranking but in recent years has fallen behind in its ranking, mostly due to the high performance of the Asian countries.

Now with these results in hand, what have the countries done to score up? Developed countries are said to have doubled or tripled spending on schools since around 1970, to little effect. America spends twice as much as Poland, yet both countries' 15-year-olds get similar results on PISA. South Africa spends more than Kenya but does more poorly.

Qatar will spend close to QR20.4 billion in this fiscal year and the budget contains funding for the construction of 18 new schools and six kindergartens in 2016.

We first asked the SEC which is now the Ministry of Education and Higher Education (MOEHE), for its view on the challenges that the education sector faces and a spokesperson answered: "Qatar usually takes leading positions in the Arab education indicators of quality, gender equality and educational process efficiency. However, the most outstanding challenge facing the educational system in Qatar is the modest performance of the Qatari students in the international unified examinations despite the country's big spending on educational requirements and high teacher-to-student ratio compared to other countries. Other major challenges include low enrolment in universities, deficient number and quality of field researches like those conducted in advanced international systems on various aspects of educational services, lack of consideration of the recommendations and findings of such researches, and the disinclination of students to join scientific courses."

Now when the challenges are identified by the educational policymakers themselves, there is relief in the fact that there is an acknowledgement of the factors that deter growth results in education. The country's situation can only improve. According to the MOEHE, Qatar is among the countries that spend generously on education. "It has developed the required strategies to meet the standards of international competitiveness, especially with the achievements made in the field of modern buildings with their advanced educational services alongside high quality internet networks covering all schools throughout the country. Work is continuing to upgrade the quality to international standards."

"I believe that the reason for so much interest in sharing ideas with our Qatari colleagues is not only to learn best practices or 'import' them to Qatar but also to bring about a very positive change in the mindset of people that learning is not about memorising. I think this is what we are starting to see in the PISA results of Qatari students." - Seppo Keränen, Program Director, Future Learning Finland

The Qatar scenario
According to an extensive, in-depth report on the educational scenario in the country by Deloitte experts Saumya Krishna, Senior Manager at Deloitte & Touche's Financial Advisory Services, and Richard Barret, Director of Deloitte & Touche Middle East's Education and Skills Consulting, while Qatar's economy has expanded rapidly between 2004 and 2011, registering an average real GDP growth of approximately 16% per annum and a real economic growth of 5-6% on an annual basis (from 2011), the education sector has been struggling to keep pace with the rate of population growth.

"Between the period 2005 and 2010, the country's population grew at a rate of 15.24% p.a., from c. 0.9 million to 1.76 million, reaching a total of 2.3 million as per the latest figures released by Qatar Statistics Authority (QSA) in Oct 2015. Although the number of schools has expanded from a total of 230 in 2005 to more than 350 in 2015, overall, the education sector has been struggling to keep pace with the rate of population growth. It is largely accepted that during the past few years, the demand for schools has far exceeded the supply," says Krishna.

"In the academic year 2014/2015, there were 243,000 students in Qatar of which 105,636 attended independent schools and the remaining 137,364 attended private schools. Technavio, a leading technology research and advisory company, forecasts that the number of students will cross 300,000 by 2019 (compounded annual growth rate of 5.4%)," she says.

An existing supply gap and an expected sustained growth in economic activity (forecast at an average annual growth rate of 4.6% between 2015 and 2019, source: EIU) have created factors that support a strong demand for schools and quality education in Qatar.

The country has already seen the measures that are in force to fill the gap.

According to the Deloitte team, Qatar's 2014-2015 state budget has included funding to construct 85 new schools. Ashghal has announced that it is currently overseeing education-related construction projects worth approximately QR3 billion to boost the country's educational infrastructure. Of this, work is already under way on 38 schools and kindergartens for an estimated QR1.73 billion. It is estimated that 33 new schools and KGs were completed and turned over to the MOEHE for the upcoming academic year 2015-2016. Of the balance, Ashghal has already awarded contracts worth more than QR1.25 billion for the construction of 17 new schools and six KGs.

As per data available, in 2015 the MOEHE granted initial approval to 75 new private schools and kindergartens (an implied increase of 31%). The MOEHE also intends to increase the independent schools by more than 33% by 2017. Combined, this is likely to boost the country's education infrastructure, according to the MOEHE.

"The school needs a national core curriculum giving the basic values and content but also space to localise it at the municipality, school and teacher levels. Principals and teachers would feel that they can influence the process if they are part of the change." - Maarit Rossi, CEO and Founder, Paths to Math

The number of student enrolments in private international schools has increased at a rate of 24% (compounded, average annual) between 2006 and 2015. "During this period the enrolment at private Arabic schools has been declining; while that at independent schools has been growing at a much lower CAGR of 4%. The higher demand for private schools is explained in many ways. The key driver is the increasing expatriate population and their preference for an internationally accredited curriculum, increasing popularity of the voucher programme amongst Qatari families which allows Qatari students to join select private schools with state support, and the general public perception that private international schools tend to have higher-quality education. As per a Strategy& (formerly Booz&Co) report, most of the private schools in Qatar outperformed most independent schools on the 2009 PISA Exam," says Barret.

When the MOEHE was asked to comment on this phenomenon of the popularity of private schools, they replied that private schools help intensify competition to improve the educational services extended to learners in all public and private schools. "The state subsidises school fees for the benefit of Qatari students at private schools through educational vouchers to provide equal opportunities for learners and parents to choose the schools that can meet their standards," they say.

However, according to the MOEHE, an increasing influx of Qatari students from private schools to public schools has been noted. "This phenomenon is attributed to the huge development of education services at public schools in terms of applying diverse educational programmes that enhance Arabic language education, scientific thinking and reasoning skills and an environment conducive to ingraining the lofty Islamic and national values and traditions in the students."

While this phenomenon is not reflected in the study by Deloitte, there is proof of the fact that the standards of the public schools are being studied and monitored.

Key PISA findings
Annualised change in performance between 2003 and 2012 and average PISA 2003 mathematics scores

Italy, Poland, Qatar, Estonia, Israel and Singapore increased their shares of top performers and simultaneously reduced their shares of low performers in science in a span of 3-6 years. In Finland, early detection mechanisms, such as periodic individualised assessments of students by several groups of teachers, allow educators to identify struggling students and offer them the necessary support early on, before they become stuck and cannot continue their education at the same pace as their peers. Israel and Germany have designed programmes that offer more learning opportunities to immigrant and minority students by providing a longer school day (Germany) or by encouraging students to participate in smaller study groups (Israel).

The MOEHE has already charted the way forward in its bid to increase standards.

"We are currently planning to implement the initiative of revising and refining the national curriculum of Qatar whose general framework was commissioned in January 2016 as a first step in the revision and refining effort. The general framework of the national curriculum will help provide high-quality education and educational outcomes through more concentration on the competencies that the students need to be able to successfully respond to and deal with the opportunities and challenges of the 21st century."

Due to the importance of competencies like creative and critical thinking, number efficiency, communication, investigation and research in life situations and in enhancing the educational process, they were endorsed as basic contents in the updated national educational curriculum in Qatar, says the MOEHE.

As these competencies are essential in achieving the ambitions of Qatar National Vision 2030, the ministry is seeking to include them in all the aspects of the educational process as an integral part of educational planning and all educational materials at all school stages.

Thus the Qatari educational curriculum will be revised and refined according to the basics prescribed by the general framework of the national curriculum, foremost the educational competencies.

The following stage of the initiative will be an experimental application and it will start after preparing the teachers and educational leaders to implement this curriculum.

Refining the educational curriculum and preparing the cadres that are going to apply it and follow up and evaluate its implementation and amendment will be a serious start of transforming the educational system based on competencies, says the MOEHI.

Responding to the PISA results of schools in Qatar, Birla Public School spokesperson Rakesh Verma commented that government policies have been on the job to include changing curricula or instructional systems and/or improving the quality of the teaching staff, e.g., by requiring more qualifications to earn a teaching licence, providing incentives for high-achieving students to enter the profession, increasing salaries to make the profession more attractive and to retain more teachers, and/or offering incentives for teachers to engage in in-service teacher-training programmes.

While there seems to be efforts from the ministry, the PISA scores definitely tell us of a need to look beyond these measures to improve learning aspects.

Correlation between engagement in school and PISA results
PISA reveals that in most countries and economies, far too many students do not make the most of the learning opportunities available to them because they are not engaged with schools. Attendance at and engagement with school do not just vary among students and schools, but also across countries.

In particular, the high-performing East Asian countries and economies, such as Hong Kong-China, Japan, Korea, Macao-China and Shanghai-China, have relatively small proportions of students who reported that they had arrived late for class or skipped a class or a day of school. The extent to which the educational aspirations of students and parents are the result of cultural values or determinants of these, and how such aspirations interact with education policies and practices is an important subject that merits further study. Whatever the case, it seems that if a country seeks better education performance, it is incumbent on political and social leaders to persuade the country's citizens to make the choices needed to show that they value education.

Learning from best practices
Maarit Rossi, the CEO and Founder of Paths to Math, a company focused on researching and developing modern educational content, is passionate about creating advanced learning solutions for schools and individuals. She was also recently named one of the Top 10 finalists for the Global Teacher Prize 2016 and she talks to us about the essentials of a well-moulded school system.

"I think there are four essential factors: the role of the National Core Curriculum, the vision and values of the school, highly professional teachers and networking to spread the word of the achievements," says Rossi.

She expands on the four factors. "The school needs a national core curriculum giving the basic values and content but also space to localise it at the municipality, school and teacher levels. Principals and teachers feel that they could influence the process if they are part of the change. We implemented the curriculum across all these levels so that everybody was committed to work for it."

According to Rossi, keeping the national curriculum as a foundation for what the citizens want from the country, the school should strive to recruit highly professional teachers who have enough freedom to implement the core curriculum. Teachers have to be willing to get additional training so that they are able to adapt and apply to the curriculum the possible changes in the society and world, and prepare children to be global citizens during these times when humanity faces challenges like radicalism and terrorism, poverty and youth unemployment.

Seppo Keränen, Program Director for Future Learning Finland, stresses that one of the most important contributing factors to the success of Finland in PISA testing is the professionalism and knowledge of their teachers. "I would like to particularly stress the pedagogical knowledge, not just the knowledge of the subject. All our teachers need to have Master's degrees, and they enjoy professional freedom and trust. In teaching STEM subjects in particular we take a very pragmatic approach and concentrate on showing children how their studies relate to the real world and how their skills can be applied in real life.
There is enormous interest from around the world towards teacher education in Finland."

He says that there has been a lot of interest to share ideas and best practices with Qatari colleagues.

"I believe that the reason for such interest is not only to learn best practices and to 'import' them to Qatar but also a very positive change in the mindset of people that learning is not about memorising. I think this is what we start seeing in the PISA results of Qatari students. Change is a long and slow process; it took Finland many years to get to the position it is now. I believe, given the present willingness of the educators in Qatar to bring changes, the educational system here is on track for change for the better."

"The idea of hard work and studying to achieve something is foremost in the process of education, that ís when there is proper learning. If the child is left alone with his challenges then he or she tends to give up sooner or later and the ultimate aim of education is lost. Educating your child is a joint venture between the child, the teachers, the school and the parents." - Juha Repo, Principal, Qatar Finland International School

The Finnish model in Doha
To know more about the celebrated Finnish model, we drive to Qatar Finland International School (QFIS) to meet the principal, Juha Repo. QFIS was established in 2014 and in its second year it already caters to 330 students from Grade 1 to Grade 6 with expansion plans for the coming year that will include more students and offer the first grade of middle school starting in Sep 2016. Repo has been in the educational sector in the region for over six years and has a fair knowledge of the two models, regional and Finnish, to compare and take notes. He is optimistic about the possibilities that exist in the country.

"Finland was considered an under-developed country after the Second World War; it was in the 1990s that we started making a success of our educational system," he says. Propagating the educational success from a country that took almost 40 years to build its system, Repo is not unduly worried about where Qatar stands now. "Qatar is a young country and the possibilities are endless," he says.

According to Repo, Qatar has the will and the resources, both of which are vital to establish education system. But for a system to work there has to be a systematic approach to education - a culture of learning needs to be imbibed.

"The school itself cannot perform miracles if other areas of the society do not support the process. You have to think of the whole community and support for education must come from everywhere. That is the challenge that the country faces," says Repo.

While the Finnish education system promotes the joy of learning, Repo says that the process of learning is not always as joyful or simple as it sounds. "A fundamental level of learning is achieved only through hard work and sometimes it might not be as joyful as it sounds," he says.

"Many families have the culture of learning. The idea of hard work and studying to achieve something is foremost in the process of education, that's when there is proper learning. If the child is left alone with his challenges then he or she tends to give up sooner or later and the ultimate aim of education is lost.

Educating your child is a joint venture between the child, the teachers, the school and the parents."

Going back to the Finnish process, Repo says that the country looks into every child's capability and provides options for every student in the country, even for those who might not be technically inclined, through its Technical and Vocational Education and Training, or TVET.

"Finland has successfully scaled this challenge by providing the best education in technical skills. More than half of the student populations do not go in for higher education, instead they join the technical education programmes, some of which are more popular than the regular colleges. This makes sure that even those students who are not academically inclined are not left out of the system and focuses on their interests through more hands-on jobs, like fixing computers, building houses and working in hospitals," says Repo. TVET has provided a means for the country to tackle youth unemployment too.

While a negative social bias has often prevented young people, in both developing and developed countries, from enrolling in vocational track programmes, Finland's reforms over the past decade have made TVET popular, contributing to lower youth unemployment rates. Over 50% of Finnish youth apply for the TVET programmes which are more competitive than general education.

Comparing the Finland model in Qatar might be unsuccessful as Qatar has left its labour challenge to be addressed by a workforce brought in from other countries, which can only be seen as an unsustainable approach. "In the long run, students need to take responsibility for all the jobs that arise in the country," he says.

"Government policies have brought about several improvements like changing curricula or instructional systems, improving the quality of the teaching staff, providing incentives for high-achieving students to enter the teaching profession, increasing salaries to make the profession more attractive and to retain more teachers and offering incentives for teachers to engage in in-service teacher-training programmes." - Rakesh Verma, Spokesperson, Birla Public School

There are a few technical educational colleges like College of the North Atlantic - Qatar and the new technical colleges in Qatar that offer an education that can be customised to industry and to students and efforts being made to make their programmes more popular to students.

One of the strategic decisions in Finland was to make the education system equal, with public schools available for all. "We do not have any private schools in Finland at all. We wanted to make it equal. No matter where you go in Finland the quality of education would always be the same. So you do not have to fish for good schools for your children as each option is the best one."

Another strategic reform was the teacher training programme, where all Finnish teachers were trained for master levels. "The teaching profession, historically, is highly regarded in the country," says Repo.

"The top 10% of high school graduates would apply for the teaching profession. The reason why people chose this career is because it is very independent; the teacher is the king or the queen of her class and there is no supervision, because it is the trust based on the teaching system which has trained someone for over four years, so well."

It is these reforms that make the Finnish model one of the best in the world for its inclusive nature, keeping in mind the simple theory that each child of the country is an important facet for the system to work.

The MOEHE looks into the quality of all the private schools within the country through its well-established accreditation system while, for the public school sectors, the best way forward is to address the teacher training process, according to Repo.

"Qatar, through the arm of Qatar University, is also in the process of signing an MOU with the University of Jyväskylä for research initiatives and to train the local teachers," he says.

One of the reasons why the QFIS was invited here was so that they could use their expertise to tailor a new learning tool within this cultural fabric.

"We were asked by the Ministry to use some of the methods that we have been using in our home country and then see how they can be implanted in this context. This can then be reported to the Ministry and then we have also begun to support the Ministry through teacher training programmes."

The country has put all its efforts in building the educational system from where it was. The rest is in the hands of its people; it is for the citizens to work cohesively with their children and inculcate in them a habit for hard work and learning.

© Qatar Today 2016