School readiness test for KG children starts

The Ministry of Education and Higher Education began Sunday implementing the school readiness test for the pre-primary level in the kindergarten stage, and it will continue until May 26. This test aims to measure the student's readiness to move from the preparatory stage to the first grade of primary school, and it is applied within the indicators of the Ministry of Education's strategy. Because of the importance of the test, the Department of Early Education has worked in this context to raise awareness of teachers, schools and assistants, as 4,298 children in all 65 kindergartens in Qatar are to be tested. The student counseling division of the Department of Schools Affairs at the Ministry of Education and Higher Education held the first forum for new psychologists in integration and specialized schools, in cooperation with Roua Center. Dr. Flavia Muhammad Othman, a student psychological counseling specialist in the Student Counseling Department, said that the Ministry is keen to constantly train psychologists to raise their efficiency, develop their capabilities, and qualify them to deal with all the problems and issues that are expected to deal with in their field of work, as it assigns much importance to students' mental health. She referred to the great role played by the psychologist in terms of early psychological intervention for individual cases, preventive counseling for students, teachers and parents, developing the skills of gifted and talented students, and treating, modifying and changing students' behaviors to provide an appropriate psychological climate in the school environment. For her part, Samira Ahmed Belkacem, a psychologist at Roua Center, said that the new psychologists are to be trained to deal with students with special needs and their parents, and provide them with new treatment methods and plans to develop their capabilities and improve the experience of this category of students and their families. Over the course of two days, the forum dealt with two main axes, the first on the professional practices of the psychologist and their relationship with the school's employees, and the second on the professional relationship between the psychologist and the parent for the success of the individual educational plan.