UAE | Education
Parents to play greater role in improving education
Parents can expect to play a greater role in improving the quality of education in Dubai as education authorities have urged schools to work in tandem with parents to raise their standards.
- By Anjana Sankar, Senior Reporter
- Published: 23:17 March 25, 2009
Dubai: Parents can expect to play a greater role in improving the quality of education in Dubai as education authorities have urged schools to work in tandem with parents to raise their standards.
Transparency and accountability will be the first step towards this direction as the Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA) has instructed schools to share the Dubai Schools Inspection Bureau's (DSIB) first summary reports with parents.
The results of the first batch of inspections covering 69 schools will go public next week when it will be put on the KHDA website on Thursday, April 2.
Out of the 24 public schools and 45 private schools of whose results were compiled and completed, four were found to be outstanding, 25 good, 34 acceptable and six fell into the unsatisfactory category. The report will also highlight key information from inspections, particularly the strengths of the school and recommendations for improvement, as well as which of the four performance categories the schools fall in.
A report covering all public and private schools in Dubai will be ready by May.
Dr Abdullah Al Karam, Chairman of the Board of Directors and Director General of the KHDA urged parents to deal with the report with caution. "We want parents to look at the results both subjectively and objectively. They should give schools a chance for improvement because schools never got one before, with a specific framework to work on."
He also called on the schools to start an open dialogue with their parents and come up with an action plan for raising standards.
"The summary report is essentially for the benefit of parents; to make them aware of what is happening in the schools. The engagement between schools and parents have always been limited to isolated matters like tuition fees, books, uniforms or some specific activity. But this framework for evaluating schools will be the window by which the two parties will talk to one another from now on," Dr Al Karam said.
Reiterating the KHDA's stand on phasing out schools that continue to deteriorate or improve their standards he said schools that perform well this year will not remain good enough next year if they do not show constant improvement.
"If you continue to do what you are doing, you will fall below the standard next year because we will increase the ceiling of performance. If you look at the curve on the graph, with unsatisfactory schools on the left and outstanding schools on the right, we want everybody shifting towards the right," he said.
Elaborating on the inspection procedures, Jameela Al Muhairi, Chief of the DSIB, said inspections for the first batch that took place between October to December, 2008, included a one-day preliminary visit to each school three weeks prior to the inspection. Inspections included a survey of more than 9,000 parents: 4,000 30-minute classroom observations were also undertaken as part of gathering evidence.
"The challenge for all schools, post inspection, is to maintain the key strengths identified and work diligently to improve on the weak areas. Schools that were found unsatisfactory will be revisited every three months to track their progress over the year," said Jameela.
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