Failing pupils as young as eight are being pulled out of mainstream education and placed in evening classes at adult education centres in Dubai to continue their studies.
The practice comes under a federal Ministry of Education rule that stipulates that children above grade three who repeatedly fail grades should be moved to other educational institutions.
One principal from Ras al Khaimah said that five per cent of the children in his school were moved to such centres.
The Ministry of Education confirmed that children did attend adult evening classes but did not comment on the scope of the problem nationwide.
The overwhelming majority of pupils transferred are boys.
A Dubai official said children in the emirate would be removed from the adult classes this autumn as part of an overhaul of adult education.
Essa al Mulla, the executive director of the national workforce development department at the Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA), the agency that oversees Dubai schools, said: “You will find very small boys, seven or eight years old, they are sitting next to a student who is 18.”
Authorities planned to move approximately 250 boys between the ages of eight and 15 currently attending evening classes in Dubai to a morning school next year.
Adding that the problem did not exist in adult centres for women, Mr al Mulla said the KHDA had advance approval from the ministry to move pupils out of adult centres.
“We will be working very closely with them on this project,” he said of the pilot programme. “Based on the success of this project they will implement it in the other emirates.”
Natasha Ridge, a researcher at the Dubai School of Government, said removing students from mainstream schools is an indication of larger problems within the state school system and its means of dealing with struggling students.
She said there were also child safety issues with mixed age classrooms.
“You are putting the younger children in potentially risky situations.”
A child who failed repeatedly “probably either has some disability or something is not going right in the family situation”. “You need proper school psychologists, and you need proper remedial teachers.”
Page last updated 01 January 2020