Dubai, UAE, Saturday, April 5, 2008 – Inspectors will go into Dubai schools for the first time tomorrow (Sunday April 6) as the Dubai Schools Inspection Bureau (DSIB), a bureau of the Knowledge & Human Development Authority, (KHDA), launches the pilot of its schools inspections program measuring quality. Full inspections across all schools will then begin in September.
Ten inspectors will visit six schools, a mix of private and public schools representing a cross-section of the curricula on offer in Dubai. The Bureau has listened carefully to principals, parents and others in the school community in a series of meetings in order to develop the criteria, or quality indicators, unique to Dubai, that it will use to inspect schools.
Jameela Al Muhairi, Chief of the Dubai Schools Inspection Bureau said: “School inspection alone does not lead to school improvement. A high quality inspection function serves to highlight areas of strength and areas for improvement and focuses those responsible for improvement on actions that need to be taken. Through consultation, however, we can ensure we have a high performing inspection service that assists and supports school improvement. It is critically important that we work with the unique education environment of Dubai in mind. We have a desire to learn from the highest performing countries in the world but we need to take their experience and make it work for us, for our own schools and for the future of our own children. By consulting with and listening to our own experts – the principals and parents of our own schools – we can ensure DSIB will contribute to creating a world class education system for Dubai.”
The DSIB will inspect every school in Dubai starting in September against defined indicators that are evident in high-performing schools across the world. These include progress of students, quality of teaching and the effectiveness of the school’s management and leadership. DSIB therefore evaluates the effectiveness of schools generally but does not evaluate individual teachers, principals or students.
Through a series of meetings at KHDA’s Academic City offices, DSIB consulted with representatives from Dubai’s 230 schools, parents and others on the quality indicators, in particular which criteria are relevant to the diverse school environment in Dubai.
Dr Abdulla Al Karam, Chairman of the Board of Directors and Director General of the Knowledge and Human Development Authority, said: “This marks another important step towards new systems that place quality and accountability at the heart of the Authority’s service to the public. Transparency about the quality of various schools allows families to make the choice that’s right for them in the “marketplace”, and will lead to equilibrium between supply and demand going forward. No matter whether we’re talking about K-12 or universities, KHDA intends to use quality and access as the benchmarks against which the public can judge us.”
As a result of the positive feedback and discussion, the key questions school inspectors will seek to ask and measure are:
- How good is the progress of students?
- How good is the personal and social development of students?
- How good are the teaching and learning?
- How well does the curriculum meet the educational needs of all students?
- How well does the school protect and support students?
- How good are the leadership and management of the school?
- How well does the school perform overall?
The people who attended the consultation meetings, held in English and Arabic, warmly welcomed the opportunity to discuss and inform the process of school inspections.