Picture used for illustrative purpose only.

Gulf Today, Staff Reporter

His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of UAE and Ruler of Dubai, will attend the closing ceremony, which will crown the winner of the 5th edition of the Arab Reading Challenge from among five finalists.

Millions of Arab viewers will be able to watch the announcement of the winner of the Arab Reading Challenge in a closing ceremony to be aired live on MBC channel on Monday.

The ceremony will be broadcasted on MBC Channel at 8:30pm (UAE time) on Monday, Sept.20, 2021.

The Arab Reading Champion will be selected based on the ability to articulate general knowledge, critical thinking skills, communication and diversity of books selected.

The event will also see the announcement of the Outstanding Supervisor and Best School.

The “Best School” takes away Dhs1 million award, while the “Outstanding Supervisor” wins Dhs300,000 cash prize.

The Arab Reading Champion takes home Dhs500,000 cash prize, bringing the total of prizes distributed to Dhs11 million.

The closing ceremony is the final stage of the Arab Reading Challenge, which turned the COVID-19 pandemic into an opportunity to utilize digital solutions to encourage school students to read and summarize books.

Participants were evaluated at class level in countries across the world, then school level, proceeding to the level of the educational district, directorate or governorate, leading up to selecting the top 10 students from each country before filtering down the national winners. Students read and summarise 50 books to qualify for the challenge.

The challenge’s 5th edition attracted 21 million participants, the highest ever number in the challenge’s history, from 52 countries (14 Arab countries and 38 foreign countries with Arab diaspora), compared to 13.5 million participants from 49 countries in the 2019 challenge.

It also drew 120,000 supervisors who helped students improve their reading and summarizing skills, compared to 99,000 supervisors in the fourth edition, while 96,000 schools joined this year’s challenge compared to 67,000 schools previously.