Incentives and innovation make for highly compatible partners and the UAE Ministry of Education has validated this truth with its launch of a Dh1 million annual award for outstanding Emirati teachers. In partnership with GEMS Education, the UAE National Teacher Award will push the boundaries of pedagogy for the betterment of teachers and by extension, for students. The UAE’s emphasis on making its public education sector enter the age of excellence will encourage and stimulate public school teachers into expanding their skill repertoire. The award aims to achieve this by way of its selection criteria: Teachers will be assessed on their personalities, the results they produce, their ability to interact with local communities and, most important, their personal ideology of self-improvement.
These aspects align well with the seminal requirement in today’s education — the concept of seamless classrooms. The ability of a teacher to integrate internal and external sources of information and stimuli for a student — so that he or she can utilise learning as an active principle, rather than a passive attribute — is the only way to liberate him or her from the strait-jacket of classroom didacticism. And the importance of Emirati teachers leading the way in educational innovation lies at the core of UAE’s 2021 vision. The push for quality human resources must start at the grass roots and this award will play a big role in furthering UAE’s objectives in education.