The student recruitment segment of Getex 2009, the Middle East's leading education fair, will provide students more than 2,500 higher education options being offered by over 400 exhibitors from 40 countries, said the organisers.

Getex Dubai will be held from April 15 to 18 at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre, featuring the student recruitment segment as well as human resorces, training, education equipment and technology, and careers segments.

The 21st edition of Getex Dubai, , has reformatted its student recruitment 2009 segment to serve as a complementary platform to a recently unveiled strategy by the UAE's Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research (MHE) to establish, maintain and broaden the balance between labour market demand and the quality of the UAE's higher education graduates.

More than 648,000 students were enrolled in 1,259 public and private schools during the 2007-08 school season with up to 95 per cent of female and 80 per cent of male graduates applying for admission to higher education institutions.

'Education remains an important element in the national development strategy; in fact around Dh9.7 billion ($2.64 billion) or nearly one-fourth of the national budget for 2009 has been allocated for education,” said Anselm Godinho, managing director, International Conferences & Exhibitions, organisers of the event.

“There is certainly an urgent need to improve the quality of higher education options as part of the national strategy to strengthen manpower and increase recruitment opportunities of national graduates,” he added.

“Getex has therefore improved and realigned the focus of the student recruitment segment to better cater to the requirements of higher education students, providing them an ideal platform to interact directly with world-class education providers from around the world.'

The student recruitment segment is one of the first student recruitment platforms for international and regional universities, and is recognised as the region’s largest event that offers world-class higher education options from around the world to students in the Middle East.

The enhanced segment is part of a number of improvements implemented by Getex Dubai 2009 to complement a growing region-wide focus on improving educational standards in the GCC and developing a competitive employment market to bolster the region's human resource base. – TradeArabia News Service