DOHA, Qatar—A seven-year school revamp spearheaded by this gas-rich emirate's first lady is emerging as test case for radical education overhauls in the Mideast.

The United Nations and World Bank have long blamed low educational standards for contributing to economic stagnation and instability across the region, which faces the highest rates of youth unemployment in the world and the threat of growing religious extremism.

Schoolteachers across the region have been bound by entrenched programs that emphasize religion and rote learning, often from outdated textbooks. Qatar, with a tiny population and outsize natural-gas export revenue, launched a new system in 2004 that stresses problem-solving, math, science, computer skills and foreign-language study. The final slate of new schools in the program was approved last month, giving Qataris over 160 new schools to choose from when the next school year begins in September.

"The old system churned out obedient but passive citizens. What good is that for a global economy?" says first lady Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser al-Missned.

The daughter of a renowned Qatari democracy activist and the mother of seven children, including the crown prince, Sheikha Mozah cites personal and national reasons for the overhaul of the education system. "We don't want passive citizens. I didn't want passive children either," she says.

By the end of this year, officials say all Qatari children will be taught at new schools under the new system, and the nation's teachers will have been re-trained or forced to retire.

The transition hasn't always been smooth. Like its neighbor Saudi Arabia, Qatar lists the conservative Salafi school of Islam as its official religion, and radio talk shows and imams here have held fiery discussions about whether the schools are "un-Islamic" for teaching some subjects in English, not Arabic, and for providing music classes.

Yet rising test scores among Qatari children enrolled in the new schools suggest a potential model for other Arab education officials struggling to raise standards to those comparable to the U.S., Europe and Asia. According to a recent, two-year study funded by Qatar and conducted by the Rand Corp., children enrolled in the fourth through sixth grades in the new schools outperformed peers who attended the old Education Ministry-run schools in mathematics and science and language skills.

"Qataris value education … [but] we are a society that respects tradition," says Sheikha Mozah. "We've had to find the right pace to accomplish our goals."

It is far from clear that Qatar's effort can be replicated widely. Of Qatar's 1.3 million people, just 350,000 are citizens. As the world's second-largest natural-gas producer, it has the second-highest per-capita income—$121,000, just behind Liechtenstein, according to the Central Intelligence Agency.

Even some of the region's biggest oil exporters, like Saudi Arabia, have to struggle with a much larger and fast-growing population, draining state resources. In Egypt, the most populous Mideast nation, a lack of qualified teachers and resources have hampered education reform efforts.

Qataris involved in the educational overhaul say one on their advantages is the commitment of their ruling power couple.

After seizing power in a bloodless coup in 1995, Sheikh Hamid bin Khalifa al-Thani embarked on wide-ranging changes for his sleepy emirate and put Sheikha Mozah, the second of his three wives, in charge of social projects. She has had a hand in many other initiatives: the Al-Jazeera cable-news network; a mega-campus in Doha that houses branches of U.S. liberal-arts universities; and the Doha Debates, a televised forum where Arab luminaries argue politics and social issues of the day.

In 2003, when the steering committee working for Sheikha Mozah started recruiting teachers for the first pilot school, Qatari reaction was hostile. Mindful of a potential religious backlash, the new education council decided new schools would be segregated by gender, as were the old ones, and teachers would be required to emphasize Islamic and Arab history.

Of the more than 130 female teachers who originally volunteered for jobs, 50 dropped out just before the start of the school year, recalls Noura al-Nasf, the principal at that school, Al Bayaan Primary School for Girls, which teaches kindergarten through third grade.

Older teachers were loath to give up what many viewed as cushy jobs at state schools, where they work short hours and have taught the same textbooks for more than 15 years. Ms. Nasf's younger sister, also a teacher, was one of those who refused to jump ship with her to the independent school system.

In 2004, classes started at a handful of new schools. However, the pace of opening new schools wasn't as quick as administrators wanted, due mostly to the difficulties of attracting new teachers, says Sabah Al-Haidoos, the head of education development at the Supreme Education Council, the government agency heading the overhaul.

In 2007, the government boosted salaries at the new schools. A rookie teacher in the new system now earns approximately 9,000 riyals per month, or $2,600—the salary of a 10-year veteran in the old system.

Higher test scores at the independent schools, meanwhile, helped parents who had been unconvinced about the changes, says Maryam al-Naimi, the principal of the Omar bin Khattib Primary School for Boys. "I'd say that about 70% of Qataris used to be opposed to independent schools," she says. "Now we've got waiting lists every year.