Abu Dhabi: Four more villa schools in the capital have been closed down as part of a concerted drive to ensure that pupils are educated in proper purpose-built facilities.

The closed schools are Al Fajr English International School, which offered both the British and the UAE Ministry of Education (MoE) curriculum, Gulf Buds Private School and Salah Uddin Private School that offered the MoE curriculum, and the Philippine National School that followed the Philippines curriculum.

The schools were ordered to shut down by the emirate’s education regulator, the Abu Dhabi Education Council (Adec), at the beginning of the 2013-2014 academic year, the Adec announced in a statement sent on Thursday. The statement said that this was done “to allow parents enough time to enrol their children in other schools”.

Hamad Al Daheri, executive director of private school and quality assurance at the Adec, said providing pupils with equal opportunities and a safe and secure educational environment was one of Adec’s top priorities.

He added that parents had been informed about the upcoming closure, and that the pupils have been readmitted into other suitable schools. Details of whether the children were allowed priority admission into other schools were however not available at the time of going to print.

New dedicated premises

Villa schools are those which are not purpose-built, and are located on land not allocated for educational purposes. There were 72 such schools in Abu Dhabi emirate in 2009, but they were found to be unsafe for children, and they also did not meet the Adec’s quality and safety standards. So an initiative to close them down was launched by the regulator in 2009. Fifty four schools have already been shut down, including two Indian curriculum schools that closed at the start of their 2014-2015 academic year this April.

A number of these facilities have built their own dedicated buildings in land designated for educational purposes, including Al Rawafed Private School offering the American curriculum, and Al Shohub School, Al Salam English Private School and Merryland International School, all providing the British curriculum.

Only 18 villa schools are still operational in the emirate, and these are expected to shut down by summer 2015. Of these, six schools have obtained all necessary approval and are currently working on building new dedicated premises. Four are currently in the process of getting approvals to begin construction on new facilities, while eight are expected to close by the end of the 2014-2015 academic year.