Qatar Foundation is reducing the frequency of its global conference on education, which last year featured a keynote address by US First Lady Michelle Obama and attracted some 1,500 delegates.

The World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE) was launched as an annual event in 2009, but will now be held every other year “to allow more time and resources to be devoted to pursuing our global and local research and outreach agenda,” CEO Stavros Yiannouka said in a statement today. The announcement also stated that WISE chairman Abdulla bin Ali Al-Thani had stepped down and that the summit “is now working directly” with the office of Sheikha Hind, who was named QF’s CEO in late February.