The future of the UAE depends on having a well-educated population, one that is able to think for itself and alert to modern technology. The country cannot succeed if it has a population that scrapes through school, learning facts by rote and is technologically backward. It needs to be prepared to take its rightful place in the world in the 21st Century with confidence.
To achieve this vital aim, it is very important that teachers in public sector schools are paid a decent salary and are provided with proper working conditions so as to motivate them to do their best. They should be offered job security so that they can focus on doing their very best in the classrooms. If they are poorly paid, teachers will naturally be forced to look for alternative sources of employment in private sector schools that pay better.
Here lies the importance of the instructions of President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan to raise the salaries of teachers in public sector schools, the speedy implementation of which is being ensured by His Highness Shaikh Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice-President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, and the relevant ministries.
Schools are dealing with the future of the UAE in terms of the quality of its human resources, ensuring that the country gets the very best that it can afford. This is why reforming the curriculum, teaching methods and improving the quality of teachers are so important. Public sector schools have languished way behind their private sector competitors. But this failure can be put right and the Ministry of Education can look into the kind of reforms that are necessary in this sector.
The new pay scales and increased number of teaching jobs provided in the President’s instructions mean that the authorities in public sector schools can now prepare to start the next academic yearn in September with the best team that they can find. This is good news for pupils and for the country as well.
