Manama: Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF) has awarded 81 students, including 39 Qataris, prizes of up to 5,000 Qatari riyals each for 48 research projects on a wide variety of topics.
The winners of the Secondary School Research Experience Programme (SSREP) designed to provide secondary school students with research experience were announced on Wednesday in collaboration with the Supreme Council of Education (SEC).
“We are continuously impressed by the student research resulting from SSREP, and this year is no different, with 42 secondary schools participating in this cycle,” Abdul Sattar Al Taie, Executive Director at QNRF, said. “There is a marked increase of 25 per cent in the number of awarded schools, demonstrating a significant rise in interest amongst secondary schools in Qatar. It is also an illustration of the success our programme has achieved in cultivating the Qatari youth’s enthusiasm for research,” he said in remarks emailed to Gulf News.
The SSREP, a collaboration between QNRF and the SEC, is aimed at spreading a culture of research in the early stages of a young student’s education. In a bid to encourage research excellence within Qatar’s secondary school community, QNRF awarded prizes of 5,000 riyals to school teams ranked highest for their research projects.
The runners-up received 4,000 riyals and 3,000 riyals respectively for second and third ranks. Twenty-three schools were involved in the winning projects, with five of them receiving special recognition for crossing the 90 per cent benchmark, on seven projects.
“This programme encourages high school students to actively participate in research, helping to develop a research culture in Qatar at an early stage. We are very pleased to report that nearly half of the awarded students are Qataris,” Abdullah Al Kamali, SSREP Programme Officer, said,
“As a next step in encouraging students to actively participate in research, QNRF and the SEC will also collaborate to nominate a number of outstanding research projects conducted by Qatari students to compete for the next cycle of the Annual Education Excellence Day Award,” he added.
The QNRF received 314 research proposals during the previous cycle of SSREP, 307 of which passed expert screening at the SEC Curriculum Standards Office.
Students were then given four months to conduct their research, after which 191 final research reports were submitted to QNRF, each then being evaluated by three independent experts according to predetermined standards. In the past three cycles of SSREP, over 820 students from 55 schools have participated in the programme. The winning research projects achieved an average score of 80 per cent or above based on their quality and relevance in accordance with criteria developed by QNRF and the SEC.
