Staff shortage ails education zone

Dubai: A chronic staff shortage and lack of expertise in the Private Education Section of the Dubai Education Zone are the main obstacles to monitoring the increasing incidence of violations in schools, zone officials told Gulf News.

The Dubai Education Zone has only six employees to assist the 120,000 students and the 9,000 employees of private education.

There are only three employees to handle the registration and admission of the students as well as to deal with their complaints. The other three monitor the schools and the teaching cadre, said Mona Lootah, Head of Private Education Section.

The staff shortage has been a long-standing problem and the ministry had continuously promised of allocating more resources. "We need at least two new vacancies to fill the gap, as schools in Dubai are increasing. But this time we are optimistic, the ministry is already looking into the problem and is taking steps towards increasing the number of employees," said Mona.

The administrators in the Education Zone are so overloaded with paperwork that they do not have the time to investigate thoroughly the increasing complaints of violations in schools.

"It is impossible to do field inspections and follow up with the paperwork at the same time, so we prefer not to do the inspection on the ground as we will still come back and do our paperwork," said Salamah Al Bati and Noaima Al Hashemi, administrators in the Education Zone.

Khadija Al Hussaini, deputy director of the Private Education Section, is not fully satisfied with the performance of the zone and believes that a better job can be done. However, she attributed the problem to the structure of the zone and the allocation of its tasks. More responsibilities should be given to schools, she said.

"We need to free schools from restrictions and give them more freedom in dealing with their internal issues," she said. The school should take over the responsibility over the supervision of teachers. This will ease the paperwork which is the main obstacle of the progress of the zone and the ministry.

"If we trust the school with our children then we must trust them with appointing a qualified teaching cadre," she said. This might be one of the solutions in unburdening the zone employees from the bureaucratic work, she said.

Another issue that hurdles the work of the zone is the lack of a qualified staff and expertise. This problem is specially pressing in the revision of curriculums where there is ignorance in different curriculums, which make it difficult to assess the suitability of them.

"We need a more qualified staff and this is only possible through more training development programmes," said Khadija Al Hussaini.

"We need at least two new vacancies to fill the gap, as schools in Dubai are increasing. ... But this time... the ministry is ... taking steps."