Qatar Education Study 2015: Students' Motivation and Parental Participation Report

Abstract

The prosperity of a nation is due in part to the investments it makes in education, the value of which cannot be overstated. Indeed, education is the catalyst for improved socio-economic opportunities for a country such as Qatar, a country that has taken long strides in the development of its system of education. Over the past two decades, the desire for quality education has been very much in evidence and it is now regarded as a central plank in the economic, social and cultural development of Qatari society. Successive governments view it as strategically intertwined with national planning. Striving for excellence in education, Qatar committed significant financial investments to revamp and modernize its system of education in order to prepare citizens for the challenges of modern society. The intent here was to transform Qatar into a modern knowledge-based economy, as outlined in the National Development Strategy 2011 and Qatar National Vision 2030. Since His Highness Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani’s call for reforming the education system in 2002, discernible attempts have been made to improve the quality of education in Qatar, which now boasts excellent capital facilities and an enviable studentteacher ratio. Despite these efforts, however, a perception remains that the education system is still not meeting the needs of many and is deemed unresponsive by some. The QES 2015 constitutes the second cycle of a similar QES survey carried out in December of 2012. The impetus for this second round of the study stemmed from the need to see whether certain aspects of education have improved since the administration of the first cycle conducted in 2012. The QES 2012 was implemented at a time when the National Development Strategy (NDS) and the Education and Training Sector Strategy 2011-2016 (ETSS)4 , both launched in 2011, were in their early phases of implementation. Therefore, the present cycle of the QES, based on data collected towards the end of 2015, is a real opportunity to revisit and evaluate various aspects of schooling and to investigate the changes that have taken shape since the implementation of the QES 2012. Indeed, the findings from the QES 2012 disclosed a rather low level of motivation among a large proportion of students across schools in Qatar, and even more so in the case of Independent Schools which most Qatari children attend. As such, it appears that the Independent Schools system, government-financed schools which replaced public schools that had existed prior to 2002 and once thought of as model schools for Qatari citizens5 , did not live up to the high expectations placed in them. The present report is an opportunity to assess any improvements that may have taken place since 2012 in terms of students’ motivation and satisfaction with the preparatory and secondary Independent School system as well as with Other Schools in the country. The information provided in this report is intended to inform educational strategic planning and decision making in Qatar. It also provides an overview of stakeholders’ priorities, specifying potential areas of intervention, as well as indications that may help guide the Ministry of Education and Higher Education and other education entities in Qatar. Now more than ever 12 before, it is important that decision makers in education act on what students, parents, teachers and school administrators say, and take into account what is important to them. The report gives a summary of the key results from data gathered from the following four surveys: 1. a survey of 8th, 9th, 11th and 12th grade students, 2. a survey of parents, 3. a survey of teachers, and 4. a survey of school administrators. The survey was conducted in October – November 2015 and involved large samples of Qatari and non-Qatari participants across all different school types in Qatar. The report is structured as follows: 1. Section One discusses the results concerning students’ motivation and satisfaction, 2. Section Two focuses on the results pertaining to student plans for higher education and careers in knowledge economy fields, 3. Section Three provides an overview of the results regarding parental involvement in their child’s education, and 4. Section Four summarizes the findings related to teacher and administrator attitudes toward the school system. In each of these sections, the findings regarding the views, perceptions and attitudes of different stakeholders are presented. They are accompanied by four sets of recommendation pertaining to each of these policy–relevant areas and extrapolated from the analysis of the data