UAE: Students to be offered cash-for-grades incentives

It is a problem every parent, and every teacher, has faced: how best to motivate students to work and study. In the United Arab Emirates, the government has decided to try an approach many exasperated parents have considered: cash payments for good grades, writes DD Guttenplan for The New York Times.

At the recent WISE (World Innovation Summit for Education) summit, the lively discussion after a panel on student experiences showed a considerable gap in perspective between participants from countries where poverty was the main barrier to higher education and those where students' leisure pursuits were a potential distraction.

Dr Shaika Al Maskari, a businesswoman who has run her family's Abu Dhabi-based energy trading and oil services conglomerate for the past two decades, is a firm supporter of the UAE's Scholarship System, under which students who achieve a grade point average of 3.6 or above are paid a monthly stipend by the government.
Full report on The New York Times site