Dubai, June 9, 2011 – The Dubai Schools Inspection Bureau (DSIB) today (June 9, 2011) announced its third year of results for the inspection of Dubai’s public schools.
The 79 public schools in Dubai teach 27,213 students, or 15% of the school population. Inspectors grade schools into four categories, and the results for 2010-2011 are: Outstanding: 6; Good: 33; Acceptable: 39; Unsatisfactory: 1.
These results show that 22% of public school students are getting a better standard of education now than they were last year. In private school results announced recently, the improvement affected 13% of students.
Almost half of Dubai’s public schools are now in the Good or Outstanding categories, a 10% improvement since the first round of inspections in 2008-2009. Twenty-one schools have improved their performance over the past three years.
The Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA), of which the inspection bureau is a part, uploaded 20-page reports on each school at 6am this morning, along with Summary Findings giving an overall picture of the results. They can be found at: www.khda.gov.ae
Three of the six Outstanding schools are kindergartens, two are Basic Education schools and one is a Second Cycle Basic Education school for girls. The Outstanding public schools are: Al Bara’ah Kindergarten, Al Manhal Kindergarten, Childhood Development Center Kindergarten in Dubai, Al Nokhba Model School, Al Qeyam Model School and Umm Suqeim Shool for Girls.
According to the results, public kindergartens have improved over the past three years. In 2008-2009, less than half of them were Good or Outstanding. That figure has now risen to 75%.
Announcing the results to public school principals and parents at Academic City, Jameela Al Muhairi, Chief of the DSIB, said: “When we started inspecting public schools in 2008, it was a new concept in the education field in Dubai. Now we have built a community of principals, teachers, and parents, and there is a greater understanding of our aim.
“In our second year of inspections we were able to introduce the idea of measuring the rate of development in schools’ performance. It was then that we realized there was an obvious improvement and a growing understanding of the need for quality assurance.
“We now have six Outstanding public schools; in our first year there were none. We also survey parents, and this year it became clear that they appreciate that public schools now compete strongly with private schools. Our partnerships between public and private schools have led to a sharing of best practices that both have benefitted from.”
Turning to schools in the Unsatisfactory category, Ms Al Muhairi said there is now only one, down from eight last year. “We carry out follow-through inspections every three months to schools that want to improve their areas of weakness, and our School Support Unit works with these schools. We can see that this hard work is reflected in our results.”
Also attending the event was Fatma Al Marri, CEO of the Dubai Schools Agency. She said: “The development of education in the region over the last 10 years has focused on the “engineering” side, such as facilities and equipment. There was less interest in raising social responsibility by sharing data and information about school performance with the community. Furthermore, there was no emphasis on stimulating and encouraging the education sector to improve its performance.
“Dubai has achieved an outstanding position in the map of educational development by focusing on accountability. We have focused for the last three years on raising the community accountability and putting in place a system of reliable data based on the performance of schools. We have done this by taking part in international assessments such as PISA and TIMSS, publishing the reports of DSIB, gathering feedback from schools and parents.
“All of this provides us with the strong points of accredited curricula in Dubai, and KHDA has received many requests from schools and parents to learn more about best practices and how to raise the standards of teaching and learning. Dubai is qualified to adopt a unique methodology in stimulating a better performance from its school system and through supporting best practices in the school community for providing the best to students in Dubai.
“The Support Unit in DSA believes that the real development starts from the education sector; by encouraging public schools to improve their performance based on the reports of DSIB. The success will be highlighted by sharing outstanding experiences from our very best schools. We need today to answer the question: How we can achieve success and not why? Since everyone in education has a role and opinion, long-lasting support for development needs the blessing of government, schools, parents, teachers, students, and society.”
She added: “I admire the leaders of public schools who work to improve their performance and hope that all schools continue their work to achieve education quality.”
School inspection results from the past two years
For the academic year 2009-2010, 209 schools were inspected by the Dubai Schools Inspection Bureau (DSIB). This included 23 Indian and Pakistani schools which were inspected for the first time.
Five schools were rated as Outstanding; 73 were Good; 106 Acceptable; 25 were Unsatisfactory.
Breaking those figures down into public and private schools, the categories are:
Public: 3 Outstanding; 30 Good; 37 Acceptable; and 8 Unsatisfactory. Total: 78
Private: 2 Outstanding; 43 Good; 69 Acceptable, and 17 Unsatisfactory. Total: 131
In the first-ever round of inspections, in academic year 2008-2009, the results were:
Public schools: Good, 32; Acceptable, 43; Unsatisfactory, 5. None was outstanding. Total: 80
Private schools: Outstanding, 4; Good, 34; Acceptable, 54; and Unsatisfactory, 17. Total: 109 (No Indian or Pakistani schools were inspected)
For Annual Reports from the past two years, the Inspection Handbook, the Self-Evaluation process, and individual reports for Dubai’s private schools, please go to www.khda.gov.ae