DOHA: Minister of Education and Higher Education, H E Dr Mohammed Abdul Wahed Ali Al Hammadi said that lessons on blockade will be added to curriculum at all levels of education.

“Blockade taught us self-reliance, confidence, dependence on Allah, love of the country and loyalty to the leadership,” said the Minister while talking to the media on the sideline of a reception for Qatari teachers who joined the new academic year 2018-19 at Doha Sheraton Hotel yesterday.

He said that a part of blockade lesson will be added in the curriculum of the first semester while its major portion will be part of the second semester.

Speaking about upgrading school curriculum, the Minister said the move aims at increasing the performances of students and teachers and improving the quality of the education.

“The revised curriculum will solve the difficulties of students which they used to face in the past and help them in reading, identifying numbers and other basic skills,” said Al Hammadi.

Earlier, addressing the reception, he said that the Ministry of Education and Higher Education had taken various measures to take the teaching profession to new heights in the country.

“The measures include hiring highly professional teachers and building national capability to produce good quality local teachers,” said the Minister. For example, he said, Tomoh Teaching Program had been developed to include new sections of Qataris like Qatari document holders, children of Qatari women and those born in Qatar.

The programme is being offered by College of Education at Qatar University in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and Higher Education.

“Additional budget was allocated for this programme and provided scholarships to encourage the students to get enrolled in this program,” said the minister, adding that it was an attractive package for graduates of senior secondary schools for choosing teaching as a profession after graduating from Tomoh Program.

“In order to ensure the quality of the program outputs, we have been able to attract outstanding students who are able to work in the teaching profession and obtain unconditional acceptance from College of Education at Qatar University as the national university.”

The minister said that the quality of educational outputs will remain ministry’s primary concern in light of the global changes and their rapid impact on all fields of life.

“It is obligatory for us that teachers must provide our children with new and innovative methods of teaching and thinking and help them discover and develop their talents and abilities to improve their academic performance at various levels of study.”

“The objective of our efforts is to design our developed curricula and to enable our students to acquire competencies required for the twenty-first century including knowledge, skills, personal skills, and possessing necessary skills such as higher thinking skills, deep learning and decision-making, while preserving Islamic values ​​and Qatari culture,” said the minister.