“Our next generation needs to be aware of the global nature of issues confronting mankind today,” said Rosmah Mansor, wife of the Malaysian prime minister.

Mansor, a proponent of child development who has contributed positively to improve the welfare of children through her Permata Insan Program in Malaysia, said that “teachers must be more competent today and the competencies include critical thinking, creativity, innovation, agility and adaptability as well as resourcefulness.” Mansor, who chairs the Kuala Lumpur-based Permata Working Committee, was delivering her keynote address on teachers' competency at the conference.

“We must begin today, and we must begin by ensuring that our children are well-equipped to face challenges that may come their way,” she said.

The Permata Program, launched by Mansor, identifies smart students for exposure to academia in Malaysia where Islamic studies are also taught to them to become brilliant and outstanding individuals.

Referring to the best practices in quality education, Moukim Temourov, a senior economist working with the World Bank, said that there was a need to "incorporate best practices for quality education" in Gulf countries.

In his presentation, Dr. Andreas Schleicher, OECD's director of education, said that student achievements and results are “important indicators of quality … however, achievement results can be interpreted meaningfully only in the context of the system that produced them.”

Understanding and evaluating the quality of education requires a comprehensive picture of the unique and complex characters of schools, said another speaker. “Both inside and outside, the school community may affect student achievement,” said Dr. Abdulrahman Al-Azzam, a Saudi expert.

The conference participants also called for formulating “Education Quality Indicators Framework” to place student achievement in perspective.

In today's session, Canadian initiatives of quality in education and several other models were also discussed. Another Saudi expert, Khaled bin Abdulaziz Al-Faleh, also spoke on the occasion. Several workshops on quality education infrastructures, the European Foundation for Quality Management standards, excellence in future schools and Top Quality Management in British schools were also organized on the sidelines of the symposium.