Arab Reading Challenge

Summarize Fact Check

The Challenge was launched by Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Ruler of Dubai, in 2015, with the aim of encouraging children in the Arab world to read 50 million books through a series of prizes and incentives for children, faculties and educational institutions. The prizes and grants offered totalled $3 million. It was intended to address falling levels of readership in the Arabic language, with media citing reports such as that of the Arab Thought Foundation Arab Report for Cultural Development,^[2] which asserts the average reading time for an Arab child is six minutes a year compared with 12,000 minutes in the West and a study conducted by the Supreme Council of Culture in Egypt^[3] which found the average reading rate of an Arab individual is a quarter of a page a year compared with 11 books in the US and seven books in the UK.^[4]

The Challenge focuses on students from Years 1 to 12 from schools across the Arab world. The competition runs annually from September to March. In order to enter the challenge, children are encouraged to read books and summarise them in a series of five coloured 'passports', with their teachers checking the summaries. Each passport has ten pages, hence children read fifty books throughout the academic year. They then pass through a number of qualification stages at school, district, national and regional levels.

The winning student was awarded a $100,000 bursary as well as a cash grant of $50,000 made to the student's family. The school with the best reading initiatives was awarded $1 million funding while $300,000 was offered to the faculty member with the greatest commitment to reading. The balance of the funds awarded by the challenge were granted to participating students and schools.^[5]

The headquarters of the challenge is the Dubai-based School of Research Science, with its principal, Najla Al Shamsi as its secretary-general.^[6]

The competition, which is based on reading in Arabic, includes all participating students from the Arab world’s schools from the first grade of primary school to the twelfth grade (third secondary school). It starts from September of each year until the end of March of the following year. During this period, students read books in five stages, each of which includes reading ten books and summarizing them in challenge passports, which are five colors: blue, red, green, silver, and gold. After completing the reading and summarization, students move to the qualifying stages according to approved criteria. This is done at the school level, and (12) students are selected to represent the administration in the qualifying rounds at the educational district level. Then, 12 students are selected to represent the educational district in the qualifying rounds at the Arab country level. Finally, (10) students are selected to travel to Dubai, and the student who wins first place represents the country in the final qualifying rounds, which are held in Dubai in October of each year.

The 2016 Arab Reading Challenge ran from September 2015 until March 2016 and was won by a seven-year-old Algerian student, Mohammad Farah, with the Talaih Al Amal high school in Palestine winning the $1 million funding award. In all, 3.59 million students from 30,000 schools in 21 countries participated, more than tripling the target of one million students. 18 qualifying finalists travelled to Dubai for the finals, with the top five taking part in the final ceremony.^[7]