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Students participate in the Big Science Challenge, organised by the British Council and Rolls-Royce |
Schools from Qatar, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Iraq, Bahrain and the UAE are taking part in the competition, which runs until February 3.
The winning teams from each country will be awarded a visit to London for a week-long programme of cultural exchange and educational activities, including an exclusive insight into research and engineering processes during a visit to one of the biggest Rolls-Royce centres in the UK.
Professor Ilham al-Qaradawi said: “Qatar ranks as the fifth water-scarce country in the world and has a vibrant population and expanding industrial base; growth cannot continue unless the water and energy resources and infrastructure are as efficient as possible and, especially, sustainable.
“Qatar is determined to respond to this challenge with more than short-term solutions but rather with more sustainable solutions that must be long lasting and implementable,” she said. “It is essential to raise awareness about importance of energy and water and their inter-relation,” she said, adding “it is also greatly important to raise awareness of other possibilities and resources for water. The Big Science Challenge will do just that in an educational, motivational and yet fun way.”
Supervisor at one of the participating schools in Qatar, Mustafa Galal, said: “We are collating all the ideas we have had as a result of the research. We will select the best idea in order to compete with all the other schools that have particularly strong and creative teams.
“Our school decided to participate in this competition as we already focus on water as the main topic in many lessons that we teach in our curriculum,” he said, adding “we feel that participation will support and link the students’ studies with more practical applications especially in Qatar where we have no natural, clean water resources.”
“Students will benefit a lot of for taking part in this competition, as it is a topic that is deeply linked to their daily life in Qatar. The teamwork between the more active students is encouraging the performance of students with less enthusiasm in their studies. Moreover, the use of different learning methods is helping to broaden their knowledge,” he added.
