Abu Dhabi: Students, teachers and classrooms will be evaluated as part of a new initiative to help raise the level of education across 500 public and private schools in Abu Dhabi.

A new scientific methodology known as the Containment Analysis, developed by the Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC), will help inspect the level of education offered in each school, through identifying student performance levels, in addition to exploring areas of weaknesses and strengths in each school via evaluating student and teacher average cost, classroom occupancy rate and teacher workload.

The Containment Analysis is currently used by many advanced countries including the US, UK, China, Spain, Switzerland, Finaland, Greece, Cyprus, Japan and Singapore. Explaining the new initiative to Gulf News, Dr Masood Badri, ADEC's Director of Research and Performance Management, said: "Abu Dhabi is the first Arab country to introduce this new methodology.

"Jordan has a published research about it but never used it. The new model will basically help us measure the level of performance in each individual school and help improve outcomes based on highest international standards and best practices."

Pilot projects

The ADEC will be conducting pilot projects to test the educational process across private and public schools starting next year (2011).

"Our first step familiarises school principals with the new culture. We will need each school to provide us with reliable information based on input and output factors so that we can start our auditing process. Reliance on a single variable, whether input or output will make it difficult to identify best practices and top performing schools, and may consequently result in lack of objectivity," said Dr Badri.

The new initiative is expected to help improve student outcomes and achievements, added the ADEC official. "This methodology is based on a scientific linear programming concept which helps us find optimal solutions for maximising student achievements, so that they would acquire the necessary skills that enable them to join prestigious universities within the UAE or abroad, without the need to participate in any foundation programme, and compete in the local and international job market in line with the Abu Dhabi Economic Vision 2030," said Dr Badri.

Statistics

• Private Schools - 185

• Abu Dhabi has 120 private schools with 112,000 pupils on their rolls

• Al Ain has 58 private schools accommodating 48,400 pupils

• The Western Region has seven private schools with 4,554 pupils

• Public Schools - 305