Sponsored: Turning Qatar into an education hub

It has been almost a decade since the launch of the Qatar National Vision (QNV) 2030 development plan, providing the wealthy emirate with a blueprint of transformation and growth.

Since the outline of the QNV was published in 2008, the public and private sectors have worked towards goals in four main areas – economic, social, human and environmental – all designed to help “transform Qatar into an advanced society capable of achieving sustainable development”.

Naturally, the pillar of human development rests heavily on education.

In a bid to build a capable national workforce, the vision called for improvements in education, with the Education and Training Sector Strategy identifying ways to build advanced educational systems and prepare young people for the workplace by giving them the means to reach their full potential.

Leading this charge, the Ministry of Education and Supreme Education Council has initiated numerous programmes and schemes across K-12 education, as well as in vocational and higher education; ploughing billions of riyals into the sector, including an allocation of QAR20.6bn ($5.7bn) from Qatar’s 2017 budget.

The latest move is the launch of the forthcoming EdEx Qatar event, organised by Informa Tharawat and held under the patronage of Dr Mohammed bin Abdul Wahid Al Hammadi, Qatar’s minister of education and higher education, with support from the Qatar Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Taking place in Doha, the exhibition will bring together Qatar’s entire education community to discuss a range of key industry topics at more than 30 seminars, showcase the latest services and offerings from players across the education spectrum, and facilitate networking among the 1,000 expected visitors from Qatar, the wider GCC and the international education landscape.

EdEx Qatar – a sister event to the EdEx MENA series – will break the emirate’s education industry down into four broad categories: edtech, education investment, higher education and TVET, and K-12 forum.

The first day will focus on technology and investment.

Education technology has become one of the most important questions for education providers to answer in recent years.

Described by Techcrunch.com as “2017’s big, untapped and safe investor opportunity,” edtech is expected to become a $252bn global market by 2020 – a fraction of the current $5 trillion education market, but vast nonetheless.

Digitisation has already started to transform education, from interactive classroom activities and tech familiarisation, to infrastructural changes designed to make schools, universities and organisations more efficient, secure, and effective.

This inescapable shift is increasing in speed and intensity, so its no surprise that the World Economic Forum expects demand for technology and computational skills to grow by about a fifth by 2025. Jobs will require ever more knowledge in computing and other technological areas, and that aptitude is fostered and developed in students across their education.

Education investment is also one of the brightest areas of the industry. With continually rising demand across the region coming on the back of countries’ long-term development plans, investors of various types have earmarked the GCC as a prime target – especially given some of the numbers involved.

A report by the Abu Dhabi Education Council showed that private schools in the emirate earned more than $815m in profit in the past four years.

The UAE, Kuwait and Oman have all seen significant investments, and Saudi Arabia has opened the door for private sector investments. Qatar is also eying large-scale investment, looking to take advantage of the increasingly narrow opportunities in the lucrative UAE market while highlighting its own growing industry, population and ambition as reasons for investors to get excited.

Colliers International backs up the opportunities ahead in its Doha Education Overview which shows that in order for Doha alone to sustain its burgeoning population, between eight and 12 new schools, with a capacity of 1,500 to 2,000 students per school, are required to enter the market each year by 2022.

EdEx Qatar will give interested parties important Qatar-focussed advice and insights, with private educators from across the region looking at the emirate’s market and examining just how attractive Qatar is to regional and international investors. Other sessions will contemplate legal structures that are suitable for the market, curriculum and differentiation strategies for Qatar, financing options, building scale in the schools market, and recruitment and retention.

To register and visit the EdEx Qatar exhibition for free, please visit www.edexqatar.com.