DUBAI // Public schools in Dubai must greatly improve the performance of pupils and the status of teachers and attract top Emirati students to meet international standards, education officials have said.
Figures released yesterday show a widening gap between the performance of pupils at private schools and those in public schools in the emirate.
The results of Dubai’s first participation in the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) assessment, released in full yesterday, showed that year four and year eight students in private schools scored significantly higher in mathematics and science than those in public schools.
At a meeting releasing the results, Dr Abdulla al Karam, the chairman and director general at the Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA), said the apparent gap of knowledge between private and government pupils reinforced concerns held by authorities for some time.
“The private has outperformed the public sector and this is not surprising,” Dr al Karam said.
“For many years there has been a migration of nationals from public to private for various reasons; be it better facilities, better system, whatever. I don’t think the reasons are crystal yet.”
Year four public school pupils averaged 398 in mathematics and private school pupils scored about 40 points higher.
The difference widened to almost 100 points in year eight, in which the public school pupils’ average fell to 378 points. In science, grade four public school pupils averaged 404 points and private school pupils were 70 points higher.
In year eight public school pupils averaged 427 and the gap widened to 80 points. Fatma al Marri, the head of KHDA’s Dubai School Agency (DSA), said there were many problems facing public schools, including teachers’ status, payment, training, and the school environment.
“We will have a big rate of dropouts in the public schools. These are the main issues,” Ms al Marri said in an interview conducted before the results were published.
Nearly half of all Emirati families living in Dubai have opted to send their children to private schools. There are 28,776 pupils in state schools and 22,736 in private schools.
Student results in the state school system continue to be a huge issue in Dubai and other emirates. Ms Marri said the most pressing issue facing the school system was bringing Emiratis back into the state schools.
The KHDA has announced plans to reform government schools through means including a curriculum overhaul and changes to teacher training, but officials acknowledge there is much more to do.
Ms al Marri said she would like to see a rise in teacher salaries in the state school system: “Because of the cost of living in Dubai we feel it’s a problem and a big issue.”
But she said the KHDA could not address the issue as salaries were controlled by the Ministry of Education.
Last year only 11 per cent of high school graduates scored high enough on the Common Educational Proficiency Assessment English test to bypass a year of remedial English before qualifying for university coursework.
Passing rates at private schools remained substantially higher than at state schools, but low student achievement is just one symptom of the many problems facing state schools.
Because the UAE does not yet have a system to licence teachers many schools are staffed by instructors who lack basic credentials, such as a degree in teaching. Ms al Marri has spent more than 22 years in the state school system as a teacher, then a principal.
But overseeing the education of almost 200,000 pupils in 220 private and state schools is not an easy task, particularly since the UAE is in the middle of a huge overhaul of its state school system, which also includes a new emphasis on English instruction.
“The challenge, if we’re talking about the public schools, is the competition of the private sector,” she said, adding that Emirati families are abandoning the state school system every day.
Education reform is a top priority for the nation and for Dubai in particular. The KHDA itself was formed in 2006 under the directives of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, to bring the knowledge and human resource sectors up to international standards.
One of the first things the KHDA did was to start restructuring the way education is managed. The DSA was formed to create a single body to oversee schools in the emirate.
Shortly after the KHDA began it took control of the emirate’s 138 private and 82 state schools from the Ministry of Education. When the DSA was formed the education zones, which used to oversee the management of Dubai schools, were folded into the new department.
Last December, the KHDA created another department, the School Inspection Bureau, to help Dubai measure the quality of its schools.
“We don’t have any evaluation or assessment programmes in our schools,” Ms al Marri said. “If we are talking about school improvement and school development it means that we are talking about quality. You cannot measure quality unless there is a system to inspect and assess what is happening in schools.”
School inspections began at the start of this academic year and by the end of the year Dubai expects to have assessed every state and private school in the emirate. Reports will be drawn up and schools will be encouraged to focus on areas for improvement highlighted in the reports.
“The main target is school improvement. It’s not closing down the schools whether it’s public or private,” Ms al Marri said.
The DSA has also worked on revamping the physical education curriculum; promoting reading in Arabic in schools; and it has shut down all but two of Dubai’s “villa schools” – private schools in which tuition is cheap but hundreds of children are crammed in.
Kathryn Lewis