UAE | Education

Pupils' academic skills to be assessed

Pupils in public schools across the UAE will undergo a national curriculum assessment this spring to evaluate their academic performance against international standards set by the Education Ministry.

  • By Siham Al Najami, Staff Reporter
  • Published: 23:36 December 25, 2008
  • Gulf News

  • Dr Vincent Ferrandino, an educational consultant of policy and planning office at the Education Ministry, speaks at a meeting.
  • Image Credit: Supplied picture

Dubai: Pupils in public schools across the UAE will undergo a national curriculum assessment this spring to evaluate their academic performance against international standards set by the Education Ministry.

The pupils will be tested in Mathematics, Science, English, and Arabic to "give us some baseline information about our own standards. It will show how each school is doing," said Dr Vincent Ferrandino, Educational Consultant in Policy and Planning at the Ministry.

He said the results will be good feedback for parents and educators.

"The test will be over a week and on different days. The results should be out by the end of the academic year," he said.

Key educational factors are currently being addressed in the Education Ministry with many projects put in place to change the low performance of public schools when compared to the private sector, he said. Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA) recently announced the results of a Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) assessment that was undertaken in Dubai schools in 2007.

Private vs public

Public school pupils averaged 398 in mathematics while private school pupils scored about 40 points higher in recent results revealed by TIMSS and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).

The difference widened to almost 100 points in year eight, in which the public school pupils' average fell to 378 points.

Officials from KHDA said a number of issues could result in these grades.

They said the next step calls for a comprehensive study to draw upon the strength and weaknesses in education.

"There is a long way to go for our pupils ... The results show that our students are not performing at a level that I think anyone of us would be happy with," said Ferrandino.

"These scores didn't surprise me at all. Until now there was a lot of talk about the system not functioning well but this was the evidence," he said.

A significant number of students go for foundational courses for up to a year before joining their first year of university.

"This should not be the case at all," he said.

The ministry has already worked on developing a new set of national curriculum standards to provide international best practices for students to achieve, he said.

Resources

"They now have to be implemented in the schools while resources have to be purchased, identified and developed for each of these standards," he said.

"Teachers need to be trained on how to deliver them. We have a major contract that we have for professional training of the teachers." Ferrandino said getting enough resources was a major concern.

"The budget for next year was increased ... But one of the things that should be addressed at one point is the salary of teachers and that requires more resources to be accomplished. Unless we improve the compensation for teachers its going to be tough to attract the quality of teachers that we want."

Maintenance: School buildings

  • 80 per cent of school buildings need to be rebuilt, according to a study conducted in 2006 by the Ministry of Education which assessed buildings
  • 598 out of 771 schools were examined across the UAE
  • 355 schools were categorised as "unsuitable" (60 per cent of the total)
  • 96 schools were labelled as in "good condition"
  • 43 public schools were classified as needing "full maintenance"

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