UAE Ministry of Education partners with Rolls-Royce to launch education programme for Nationals in Dubai

• Rolls-Royce signs MoU with UAE Ministry of Education to drive Emirati engineering skills
• First ever private sector company to have such a prestigious agreement with UAE Government
• Unique programme to promote science and engineering careers to UAE nationals

DUBAI – Rolls-Royce, the global power systems company, today signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the UAE Ministry of Education to launch a pilot programme for Rolls-Royce Technology Laboratories (‘Rolls-Royce Tech Labs’) in the UAE, in a ceremony attended by His Excellency Humaid Al Qatami, UAE Minister of Education, and Rob Watson, Regional Director – Middle East, Rolls-Royce.

Designed to promote interest among UAE students in science and engineering and to give them practical engineering skills, the Rolls-Royce Tech Lab pilot programme will be set up at Hamdan bin Rashid School in Warqaa, Dubai. The programme is designed to encourage students into engineering careers and will initially involve the participation of 22 students and 4 teachers over a period of 13 weeks. The Rolls-Royce Tech-Lab is due to open at the start of the second semester in January 2012 for the students in Grade 11, Science section.

Speaking after signing the MOU, His Excellency Humaid Al Qatami, UAE Minister of Education, said: “The leadership of the UAE is committed to giving our students the best employment opportunities possible. The first step on the road to achieving this is by nurturing their interest and providing them with the advanced practical skills they need to enter the job market.”
“Partnering with a world leader in engineering excellence like Rolls-Royce will provide our students access to the latest technologies and practical career insights, which will hopefully attract them to the kind of technical careers needed to support and sustain our economy in future,” Al Qatami continued.

“Rolls-Royce has a long and proud history of delivering engineering excellence and innovation to support the UAE’s aerospace, marine and energy industries,” said Dr Rob Watson, Regional Director – Middle East, Rolls-Royce. “We are a company which is rich with world-class skills, technology and expertise and we are deeply committed to supporting the UAEs education goals. We share a common vision and awareness of the need to encourage more UAE Nationals to take on engineering studies in universities. The Rolls-Royce Tech Labs programme is a practical step toward this goal, and we are very grateful to the UAE government for placing their trust in Rolls-Royce and allowing us this unique opportunity to partner with them.”

Supporting education programmes is a core part of the Rolls-Royce business and the company pursues along-term strategy to promote science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) skills development and industrialisation in the communities in which it operates. The company already has several educational development programmes already on the ground or in the pipeline for the Middle East, such as the Big Science Challenge with the British Council and having been a founding member of the British University in Dubai (BUiD).

About Rolls-Royce Technology Laboratories:
1. The Rolls-Royce Technology Laboratories (‘Rolls-Royce Tech Labs’) programme has a curriculum which has been designed in collaboration with the Ministry of Education. This will run alongside the established physics curriculum and will expand on concepts already being taught to provide a practical application for students.
2. The Rolls-Royce Tech Labs curriculum will help students gain a better understanding of the wide range of opportunities available in science and engineering, and to encourage them to consider advanced degrees in these fields to help meet the need for local talent across the region.
3. The curriculum will include lessons on exploring the effect of forces; motion; understanding force, mass and acceleration; scalars and vectors; momentum; impulse; energy; circular motion; and a consolidation lesson on jet engines at the end of the programme.
4. The Rolls-Royce Tech Lab will include a broad range of laboratory equipment for teaching physics, with 25 special laptop computers giving each student a personalised and interactive experience into the world of applied physics
5. Rolls-Royce will also be responsible for training the teachers on the delivery of the Rolls-Royce Tech Labs curriculum. A three-day training session will take place on 28-30 November for more than 10 physics teachers from Hamdan bin Rashid School and other nearby schools.

About Rolls-Royce
1. Rolls-Royce is a world-leading provider of power systems and services for use on land, at sea and in the air, and has established a strong position in global markets - civil aerospace, defence aerospace, marine and energy.
2. As a result of this strategy, Rolls-Royce has a broad customer base comprising more than 500 airlines, 4,000 corporate and utility aircraft and helicopter operators, 160 armed forces, more than 2,500 marine customers, including 70 navies, and energy customers in nearly 120 countries, with an installed base of 54,000 gas turbines.
3. Annual underlying revenues were £10.8 billion in 2010, of which more than half came from the provision of services. The firm and announced order book stood at £61.4 billion at 30 June 2011, providing visibility of future levels of activity.
4. Rolls-Royce employs over 39,000 skilled people in offices, manufacturing and service facilities in over 50 countries. Over 11,000 of these employees are engineers.
5. In 2010, Rolls-Royce invested £923 million on research and development, two thirds of which had the objective of further improving the environmental performance of its products, in particular reducing emissions.
6. Rolls-Royce supports a global network of 28 University Technology Centres, which connect the company’s engineers with the forefront of scientific research.
7. The Group has a strong commitment to apprentice and graduate recruitment and to further developing employee skills.