Dubai: Indian schools flooded with admission requests beyond their capacity are seeking to open the shift system to accommodate more students, Gulf News has learnt.
School managements said they are awaiting approval from the Ministry of Education to introduce morning and afternoon shifts. If they get the go-ahead, their student intake for the academic year beginning in April will be doubled.
Watch video: Education becomes lottery
But the Ministry has ruled out any possibility of the shift system for this year, at least.
Schools that cater to the middle income groups are unable to meet the overwhelming demand, and parents are still knocking at their doors though most schools have closed admissions.
GEMS education, the biggest private school operator in the UAE, said hundreds of parents had to be turned away for lack of seats. The waiting list for Our Own English High School in Sharjah has about 3,100 candidates against the few hundred seats available.
"There is an increased demand which cannot be fulfilled with only one shift as all our schools are full to capacity since we offer the direct sibling the seat in the first instance at the Kindergarten Stage 1. The agony of parents who have children to be enrolled in the Kindergarten Stage 1 and are not able to is great and it is a disappointment for them that their aspirations for enrolment of their child in a good school will remain unfulfilled," said Richard Forbes, Director, Marketing and Communications at GEMS.
Not new
Without naming the schools, Forbes confirmed that some of the GEMS schools are seeking permission from the Ministry to introduce a second shift.
Shaikh Jaber Ali, Principal of New Indian Model School in Sharjah, said he is also planning to start two shifts if the ministry permits to accommodate more students. "Currently we have seven sections for KG and can take in only 175 students but the number of applications exceeded 450 this year. Another option is to get the individual class strength raised from the current 25 to 30 or 35. We need the government's permission for that," added Ali.
Classes in UAE schools now start at 8.30am and end by 1.30pm. The second shift will have to start at 1.30pm or at 2pm.
The shift system is not a new concept in the UAE. Many schools had two shifts before the Ministry of Education put an end to the practice a few years ago. Indian High school, Dubai, is one of the institutions that has had a shift system since its inception.
Ashok Kumar, CEO of the school, who had to deal with more than 2,000 KG applications for his school recently, said he is open to the idea of resuming the shift system.
"That is the only way we can handle the demand. If the ministry is giving the approvals, I will definitely go for it," said Kumar, who heads one of the most popular schools in Dubai. The school last month held a lottery to admit 240 kindergarten students.
Another school, which has faced problems from the authorities on shift system, is Sharjah Indian School. Its current strength exceeds 7,500. The Sharjah Education Zone has given the school time till this year's end to discontinue the shift system. "We were running shifts way back from 1979 till 2004. We resumed the system last year because of the increasing demand. But our new block should be ready by this April and then we will do away with the shift as per our agreement with the ministry," said K. Radhakrishnan Nair, Principal.
The Ministry of Education does not favour the shift system, and has clarified it will not entertain such requests, at least this year. "Shift systems were abolished because it was complicated and led to many problems starting from over-crowding of schools, teachers being forced to work overtime and clash of timings for school transportation. In principle we are opposed to the idea," Ali Mehad, Director General at the Ministry. told Gulf News.
However, he noted that the ministry will look into the issue of demand-and-supply imbalance in the market, and see what solution can be developed.
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