The biggest ever campaign to discover talented and gifted students in Saudi Arabia was launched on Tuesday through the National Program for Gifted Students Identification.
Led by the King Abdulaziz and His Companions Foundation for Giftedness and Creativity (Mawhiba), in partnership with the Ministry of Education and the National Center for Assessment (Qiyas), the program has seen the nomination of more than 594,000 students over the last 10 years, of whom more than 406,000 students have been tested, and more than 133,000 have qualified.
This year, for the first time, the program will be available to students remotely. The program involves taking the Mawhiba Multiple Cognitive Aptitude Test, conducted annually in English and in Arabic for students in grades three, four, six, and nine, in more than 100 centers across the Kingdom. The inauguration ceremony for the program’s 11th year was sponsored by Minister of Education Hamad bin Mohammed Al-Sheikh and launched at Mawhiba’s headquarters in Riyadh, in the presence of the organization’s secretary-general, Dr. Saud Al-Mathami, and the education vice minister, Dr. Abdul Rahman Al-Assemi. Al-Mathami expressed his pride in the program and its achievements over the past decade, thanking the program’s partners for their efforts.
“It’s an example of the integrative work between the government establishments, through the strategic partnership between Mawhiba, the Ministry of Education and Qiyas, in the field of discovering and sponsoring talented students in the Kingdom,” he said.
He added that, as a result of the high demand for the program under the exceptional circumstances of the pandemic, it would be available to students remotely for the first time.
“The program will also be available at the headquarters of the National Center for Assessment for the first time, in a new experience to implement the program in a manner that meets the requirements of the times.” Al-Assemi told students that they were “the hope of the nation and its bright future.”
“One of the most important conditions of excellence and creativity is not only the possession of talent, but also hard work to achieve the highest degrees of success,” he said.
Mawhiba was established in 1999 as a nonprofit foundation to support the Kingdoms’ long-term vision for developing giftedness and creativity.
Selected students, from the fourth to 12th grade, are invited to join Mawhiba classes. These offer a high-quality educational environment for gifted students to help them reach their full potential by providing additional curricula.
Mawhiba supports the selected schools by providing continuous professional development, regular assessments, annual tests, as well as conducting parent orientation workshops, in addition to afterschool STEM programs targeting children in grades four to nine.
Students are also invited to join Mawhiba Enrichment Summer Programs as informal education, including residential and commuting summer programs that are either local or international at leading universities.
