Business | General
Investing more money not always the answer
Hundreds of billions of dirhams have been spent on developing education, healthcare, housing, social welfare, culture and sports in the UAE.
- By Samir Salama, Bureau Chief
- Published: 23:38 May 3, 2009
- Image Credit: WAM
- Shaikh Khalifa, Shaikh Mohammad and other Rulers of the Emirates watch a presentation on UAE Government Strategy prior to its unveiling.
Abu Dhabi: Hundreds of billions of dirhams have been spent on developing education, healthcare, housing, social welfare, culture and sports in the UAE.
"However, despite the huge spending, the outcome has remained far below our aspirations," says His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai.
In its new three-year strategic plan, the UAE has accorded top priority to the social sector development, in order to achieve higher levels of sustained growth.
"Providing our people with a higher standard of living has always been the goal of the country's leadership. The government was never tardy in exerting its efforts and using all its available resources to ensure social and human development of the UAE," said Shaikh Mohammad.
He added that the problem was not a lack of funding, but rather a lack of implementation.
"For example, in healthcare we are not short of doctors, nor hospitals, clinics, or advanced equipment. But the healthcare sector has a major issue regarding quality.
"The budget for education has increased annually for the past 20 years and has been accompanied with several plans, projects, suggestions, policies and promises. Yet, the outcome has constantly been weakening. Even when education officials decided to restrict public schools to UAE national students, the education budget remained on the rise, expenditure per student increased yet the outcome did not improve," he said.
Shaikh Mohammad asked, "What does the budget have to do with obsolete teaching methods and curricula? Does the budget force the quality of the curricula? Is the budget limiting educators to resort to the same old fashioned teaching methods that encourage memorisation instead of research?"
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"Is the objective of education is to measure the memory capabilities of students, instead of providing them with the knowledge necessary to meet life's challenges and the ability to think and choose?"
According to Shaikh Mohammad, the problems in education also lie in implementation, in managing the education sector, and the work culture at the ministry.
No compromises
"It is a culture that is content with identifying problems, finding solutions and announcing them in the media without any sort of implementation," he said.
Even if the UAE were to spend ten times of what it spends today on education - without finding innovative, comprehensive and suitable solutions - it will not achieve better results.
"The current status of our education system is compiling huge losses to the UAE and its people."
Shaikh Mohammad said there is no room for compromises in education, and he will accept nothing short of total commitment and full-fledged effective and successful implementation.
Reaction: Big test coming up
Hanif Hassan, Minister of Education, said: "We will start working on restructuring in the coming years to avoid the memorisation approach, which will be replaced by better educational methods. The plan's application will take effect from July, and we will proceed by setting the necessary frameworks to implement this strategy.
Sulaiman Al Jasem, vice-president of Zayed University, said: "This is the first comprehensive national strategy to be ever introduced in the UAE and the region, presenting a clear framework, and a timeframe to serve the national concerns and economic and social development.
This strategy is a big test and challenge for the government which must now work on the implementation, as there are detailed directives for the plan which came in several hundred pages, with more than 500 participants from the UAE national cadres."
- Ahmed A. Elewa, Staff Reporter
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