Winners of Hamdan academic awards announced

Dubai: The winners of the eighth Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Award For Distinguished Academic Performance were announced yesterday.

At a press conference at the Ministry of Education, Dr Jamal M. Muhairi, General Secretary of the Awards Committee, and Dr Khalifa Al Suwaidi of the Awards Committee announced the winners in 12 categories of excellence, ranging from distinguished academic performance of the year to distinguished school, student, teacher, best applied project and best scientific innovation.

The awards were subdivided into groupings for UAE winners and the GCC.

Originally established in 1998 the awards were designed to support the field of education and recognise distinguished and innovative work, with the aim of furthering standards of education in the UAE and helping encourage the talent and skills of those in the academic field.

Dr Al Muhairi said the history of the awards were a great tribute to the vision and leadership of Shaikh Hamdan Bin Rashid Al Maktoum and cited past achievements since the awards started.

Due to the flexibility of the award criteria and the positive impact it had had in its first few years, the award was broadened to include public and private schools throughout all educational zones and to include all nationalities, with the addition of new categories such as educational zone administration.

Dr Al Suwaidi said a few years ago another category, the highly distinguished teacher, was introduced and the distinguished parent category modified to become the distinguished family.

The aim of the awards is to mark the vital role of education and include the importance of the family to work alongside institutions in creating educated and thinking generations.