Dubai’s nine years of organised school inspections is showing its value as the latest round of annual results show that two-thirds of students are in schools rated as ‘good’ or ‘very good’ or ‘outstanding’. This is a very encouraging result and reveals strong levels of improvement across the board. It is relatively easy for a very good school with high fees and great pupils to do well, but it is far harder for an ‘acceptable’ or ‘poor’ school to pull itself up, which is what has happened to achieve these results and this is why the emirate should be very proud of what its schools are doing.
The Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA), which is responsible for monitoring educational standards in Dubai, commented that the improvement across this wide range of schools is due to its encouragement of a culture of collaboration between schools. The KHDA has been rightly forceful in asking ‘outstanding’ or ‘very good’ schools to work with schools rated below them on the scale. These practical steps include teacher exchanges under which, teachers from the better schools show their colleagues from the struggling schools teaching techniques and transfer skills that make a huge difference.
It is important that all schools buy into the KHDA vision of a unified Dubai educational community and work with building awareness across the many curriculums and languages that flourish in Dubai’s schools, so that all can benefit. At no time should this sharing and exchange be seen as a dumbing-down exercise. Rather, it should be seen as a joint search for excellence, which has the additional benefit of fostering cross-cultural awareness within Dubai. Over the years, this search for improvement has expanded to include these with learning disabilities and it is heartening that 61 per cent of schools offer ‘good’ or better’ provision for those who need learning support.
A significant part of the inspections is a cross-curriculum focus on achieving the targets for the UAE’s Vision 2021, which lays down specific targets in maths, science and reading measured under the Timss (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Studies) and Pisa (Programme for International Student Assessment) that are global measures of school children’s skills. The benefit of such a precise target is that it gives all schools something to strive for, without interfering with their wider educational aims of building committed and engaged citizens who are able to think for themselves and use their skills in their community.
