Abu Dhabi: Educational authorities and a prominent Indian businessman spelled out several immediate measures separately Saturday to solve the lack of seats in Indian schools in the emirate.
The measures include opening a new school next week, creating more seats in an existing school, permitting a school to operate from a villa for one more year and opening more non-profit schools.
"We are committed to ensuring that every child of school age has access to an affordable and high quality education," said Dr. Mugheer Khamis Al Khaili, Director General of the Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC) during a round table discussion held with the business community last week to encourage building non-profit schools.
An Indian businessman will open a non-profit Indian curriculum school next week in Al Gharbia (formerly the Western Region) because of an ADEC initiative to solve Indian schools issue.
An ADEC statement on Saturday mentioned that it offered a disused government school to be used as the school for a temporary period until the school operator builds a permanent facility that will meet ADEC's standards.
Dr. B.R. Shetty, Chairman of the Abu Dhabi Indian School (ADIS) and Managing Director and CEO of NMC Group in Abu Dhabi, told Gulf News that he is opening the non-profit Indian school in a government school building in Madinath Zayed on April 11.
Watch video of how a school has resorted to a lottery system for new entrants:
Reasonable fees
"The fees will be reasonable… approximately Dh200-Dh250 per month per pupil," he said.
The Kindergarten One to Grade Six School will be upgraded every year, Shetty said. He said he is working with the ADEC to determine the number of seats in the school. "It is heartening to see that ADEC has realised the problem of [the] Indian community and took immediate steps to solve it," Shetty said.
He revealed that he has requested ADEC's approval to build one more non-profit school in Abu Dhabi (either in the city or close to the city).
The ADEC statement said it has created 400-500 seats in one school by increasing three places per class. Shetty confirmed that it was in ADIS and all the seats were already filled.
He also revealed that ADEC has permitted in principle to build more class rooms in the ADIS premises to accommodate more pupils soon.
Shetty said they have also requested permission to open one more branch of ADIS.
ADEC also said it has extended the operation of an Indian curriculum school in Abu Dhabi for this coming school year, which will allow for another 150 places for kindergarten children.
The school was due to move to Musaffah as part of ADEC's phased villa closure plan.
As Gulf News reported last week ADEC instructed Emirates Future International Academy to hold fees at 2009 levels to reduce the financial pressure on parents.
