A Study On Qatari Policy Of Basic Education In 21^st Century

The leadership of the State of Qatar views education as the key to Qatar’s economic and social progress. But the country’s education was not producing high-quality outcomes and was rigid, outdated and resistant to reform. In 2001, the Qatari leadership invited RAND Corporation to examine its basic educational system which consists of kindergarten through grade 12 (K-12) in Qatar and also to recommend options for building a world-class education system. Having chosen one of the three reform options RAND proposed, His Highness the Emir of Qatar enacted the Education for a New Era reforms initiative to establish a new K-12 education system. The reform plan was based on four principles:autonomy, accountability, variety and choice. The dissertation gives a thorough analysis on the process of policy-making and policy-implementing of Qatari basic education policy from a perspective of policy-analyzing.This dissertation contains five parts as following.The first part, The Introduction, mainly deals with the origin of the topic and the value of the dissertation. Meanwhile, this part describes the general thought, the basic framework, methods adopted in this research and the achievements and shortcomings of former researches on this topic.The second part consists of Chapter one and Chapter two. Chapter one mainly introduces the contexts of policy-making concerning education including Qatar’s political and economic status, history, cultural traditions and the education system. Chapter Two mainly elaborates the process of policy-making concerning Qatari basic education policy in the new era from the definition of policy issue, the design of policy options and the selection of policy options.The third part includes Chapter three, Chapter four and Chapter five. This part primarily studies the implementing process of Qatari basic education policy in the new era. Chapter Three focuses on the establishment of reform organizational structure and its operational process. The reform’s organizational structure includes Supreme Education Council, Implementation Team, Institutes, Offices and Independent Schools. Chapter Four deals with the educational Quality-guarantee Mechanism, also being called the educational accountability, which includes Curriculum Standards, the National Students Assessment System, the Data-collection and Report System, as well as the Consequence. Curriculum Standards are the foundation of the educational accountability, the National Students Assessment is a means of the implementation of the educational accountability, the Data-collection and Report System as well as the Consequence is the incentive mechanism. Chapter Five discusses the policy for teachers and policy for funds of Qatari basic education in the new era. Policy for teachers involves how the independent schools’ governors are supposed to recruit and retain teachers and other staff, the types of professional development opportunities which should be available to teachers; policy for educational funds includes the total spending on the reform, independent schools and staff expenditures, as well as the trends of those.The fourth part includes Chapter Six. From the angle of policy-analyzing, this section mainly analyses the process of the policy-making and policy-implementing concerning Qatari basic education in the new era. Dynamic analysis mainly analyses whether the definition of policy issues are accurate, design of policy options are feasible in the process of the policy-making or not; whether all of the education policies are in place in the implementation process or not. Static analysis mainly analyses whether the policies of Qatar basic education in the new era are comprehensive, whether it can ensure to achieve the aim of the education reform in the new era or not.The fifth part contains Conclusion. This part summarizes the experience of basic education reform in Qatar in the new century, pointing out the several innovations and limitations in this research. Finally, predicts what the future of the research on Qatar education system is going to be.