UNESCO. General Conference; 30th; Records ... - unesdoc - Unesco

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(24.1) Mr KAFOUD (Qatar) (Translation from the Arabic):
Madam President, Mr Chairperson of the Executive Board, Mr Director-General, ladies and gentlemen.
Peace and the Mercy and Blessings of God be upon you. I should like to begin by offering, on behalf of the
delegation of the State of Qatar and on my own behalf, hearty congratulations to the President on her election. I
wish her all success in conducting the work of this session of the General Conference. I should also like to express
my appreciation for the important role played by the Chairperson of the Executive Board and the other Members of
the Board, who since the end of the last session of the Conference have spared no effort in studying the Draft
Programme and Budget for the coming biennium. They have submitted to this Conference invaluable observations
and recommendations which will unquestionably help to define an appropriate framework for the programmes and
budget for the next two years. In addition, I wish to thank the Director-General of UNESCO and his colleagues and
the staff of the Secretariat for their efforts they have made and are still making to issue documents and, in general,
prepare for this Conference.
(24.2) Ladies and gentlemen, with your permission I shall begin by reviewing briefly some of the main
developments that have occurred in the State of Qatar since the last session of the General Conference in the fields
of education, science and culture, thanks to His Highness, Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al Thani, the Emir of Qatar,
without whose concern and support those developments would not have taken place.
(24.3) First, as regards the field of education, the State of Qatar has prepared, in the context of education policy
development, a public education policy project setting forth its basic terms of reference, with a view to integrating
development priorities into a setting of the terms and conditions required for qualitative competence in education.
In the area of secondary education, Qatar has completed an integrated project for secondary education development
in the context of an objective effort to address imbalances among educational inputs on the one hand and the needs
of development and the labour market on the other, taking into account the urgent need to provide our students
with a comprehensive global culture that will enable them to adapt to contemporary changes in science and the
world of work. Concurrently, we have undertaken the comprehensive development of technical and vocational
education, geared to global economic change, drawing, for that purpose, on world expertise for the development of
industrial and commercial education, curriculum development and course planning. Curriculum development, in
particular, went through a quantitative and qualitative transition: scientific knowledge had to be integrated with
practical applications, while a balance between quantity and educational level had to be maintained at every stage.
The outcome has been that our curricula are now characterized by global trends, values and concepts reflecting the
culture of science, the environment, love, tolerance, peace and justice. These trends, values and concepts express
Qatar’s orientation towards the consolidation of the practice of democracy, and its advocacy of democracy as a
human right and as a fundamental condition of social, economic and cultural life, including, in particular,
development and the aims of development. Teachers, for their part, are a basic constituent of our evolving
educational policy and a pivotal component in our developmental priorities. Accordingly, Qatar intends to develop
teacher training programmes, and is working to upgrade teachers’ professional qualifications to include recent
developments in the various fields of science, education and technology.
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