Over 1.5 million students compete for 5th edition of Arab Reading Challenge in Jordan

DUBAI, (Pakistan Point News - 14th Oct, 2020) Student Abdullah Mohammed Murad Abdul Hameed Abu Khalaf was crowned champion of the 5th edition of the Arab Reading Challenge at the level of Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan among 1.5 million students from 3,433 schools who took part in the largest Arab reading event of its kind.

Some 21 million students participated in the contest in the Arab world.

Abu Khalaf was announced as a champion of the challenge at the Jordan level during a digital event at the closing ceremony of the Arab Reading Challenge in Jordan. Jordan's Minister of Education, Dr. Tayseer Al-Nuaimi; Muna Al Kindi, Secretary-General of the Arab Reading Challenge, and several education officials attended the ceremony.

The final qualifiers competition was launched last August at the level of the kingdom and included 485 finalists, of whom ten qualified first, until the jury selected the winner at the national level for this year's session.

Fakhri Al Mayaas won the "Distinguished Supervisor Award", while Al Hassad Al Tarbawi School at Amman Governorate clinched the "Excellent school award" of the 5th edition of the Arab Reading Challenge organised by the Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Global Initiatives, MBRGI, with the participation of students from 52 countries worldwide.

This year's edition, the largest of its kind in the history of the Arab Reading Challenge, relied on technology and digital tools extensively, including providing students with reading materials digitally and allowing the participants to summarise the books that the participants read through e-folders, in addition to the provision of a digital supervision system that allowed supervisors to follow-up on students' performance in the Challenge, as well as holding the initiative's arbitration committees for qualifiers in their various stages virtually.

In this regard, Saeed Al Eter, Assistant Secretary-General of MBRGI, said, 'In less than five years of its launch by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President, Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai, the Arab Reading Challenge has succeeded in becoming the largest reading event in the middle East, with the participation of more than 21 million students from various parts of the Arab world which included the diaspora of these countries."

The challenge is an Arabic reading competition with participating students from Years 1 to 12 from schools across the Arab world. The competition starts every year in September until the end of March. Students work through five stages of the competition reading ten books and summarising their content in the challenge passports. Upon completion of the reading and summarising, the final stage of elimination commences according to set criteria. The eliminations are done amongst schools, education zones and Arab countries until the finals which are held annually in Dubai in October.