ABU DHABI // Private schools that fail to meet government standards could be shut down under new by-laws that will require the institutions be accredited.
Those that are not would eventually lose their licences, Ministry of Education officials said yesterday. Until now, private schools have been given licences as long as they demonstrate they can operate as a viable business.
Only a handful voluntarily seek accreditation, typically awarded by bodies such as Middle States Association (MSA) in America and the International Baccalaureate Organisation (IBO) in Geneva. Only eight of Dubai’s 137 private schools have international accreditation.
The new regulations mark the beginning of a larger set of changes for private schools.
Dr Hanif Hassan, the Minister of Education, also announced that education authorities and councils, such as the Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC) and the Knowledge and Human Development Authority, would start supervising private schools in addition to government schools.
The old by-laws, which have been in effect since 1999, imposed a host of rules and regulations on schools. They stipulated there should be a “modern blackboard appropriate for the classroom”, and went as far as to detail what constitutes an acceptable illness for a student to miss a day of school.
The new by-laws spell out the steps necessary to obtain a licence to open a school.
However, they do not state what steps private schools must take to obtain ministry accreditation. A separate accrediting commission will be created by the ministry within the next year to oversee the process. The final version of the by-laws has not been released.
The ministry is considering whether it will accept the credentials of existing accrediting authorities, such as MSA or IBO. Any accrediting organisation would have to meet the ministry’s standards.
Officials said the new system “will focus its attention on private schools most in need of improvement and allow well-functioning, accredited private schools greater autonomy in their work”. In the interim period, unaccredited schools will receive regular site visits.
Private schools that are unaccredited pose huge problems for parents. Since the best international schools are heavily oversubscribed, parents are often forced to send their children to schools they consider substandard.
In a recent survey, Etihad Airways found that many of its employees were only “slightly satisfied” with the quality of education, largely because they were not able to get their children into their school of choice.
“We owe it to the children of Abu Dhabi to provide the best possible education for them,” said Mark Evans, who heads Penta International, a firm that carries out school inspections internationally and works with the ADEC.
“If you don’t accredit schools you are avoiding the issue of standards. Every school in the world can be made better than it is. Really the accreditation process is about encouraging school improvement for the best schools as well as schools that are not as well run.
“It’s all about starting a cycle of school improvement and keeping that cycle rolling. As schools get better and better, you still keep the cycle of improvement going. That’s what accreditation