Dubai: Shaikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Presidential Affairs, has said the public school curriculum needs major changes.
He was speaking at the Government Summit at Madinat Jumeirah on Tuesday. On being asked whether he is satisfied with where the education sector is at, Shaikh Mansour said if he said yes, he would not be saying the truth as the ambition of parents whose children attend public schools is much bigger.
Shaikh Mansour said children need to learn more about their country’s history because those who do not know their past and heritage are not as patriotic as those who do.
He said when the Curriculum Committee was presenting the national curriculum plan to him recently, they kept talking about the union and what happened after. He asked the committee: “Where is our history? We have to plant the history of the UAE from 50 years, 100 years and 200 years before the union in our children as our ancestors were here on this land before the union.”
The Ministry of Education and the Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies are working together and looking into studying old documents that date back hundreds of years. They will try to find a way for the information to be incorporated into the national curriculum.
The Arabic and Islamic Studies curriculum also needs to be reviewed and updated periodically. He said some Arab communities in foreign countries that do not have Arabic as the first language have a better Arabic and Islamic studies curriculum than the UAE. This should not be the case, he said.
Shaikh Mansour said science subjects’ curricula should be translated into Arabic from curricula of countries that are ahead of the UAE in the sphere. A curriculum for the UAE that is inl ine with its culture should then be created.
Shaikh Mansour said citizens come first. The UAE gives full support to Emiratis to help the country become the best in domestic and international endeavours.
“The Emirati citizen is the country’s first, second and third priority,” he said. Empowering comes before Emiratisation. Hence, the focus now is to empower capable Emiratis who will be able to best serve the UAE in whichever area they go. He spoke about the initiatives launched by President His Highness Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan involving the national curriculum and Emiratisation.
Shaikh Khalifa has launched a series of initiatives over the past two years that aimed at improving government services and providing jobs across the Emirates. “We have coordinated with local government bodies and created programmes to develop housing, road networks, bridges, dams, hospitals and schools.”
He said one of the most significant Emiratisation initiatives is “Absher”, an initiative that aims at employing more Emiratis in the private sector. Emiratisation in the government sector is now over 90 per cent. The focus is on the private sector.
“I am convinced that there is a good response from many companies in the private sector as the team at Absher is aiming at employing 20,000 Emiratis in the private sector. They recently told me that the number might go up to 30,000. They would not have said that if the response from the private sector was not positive,” Shaikh Mansour said.
He said some members of the new generation are not willing to work in certain jobs because they are adverse to taking up lesser jobs with junior titles. This should change, as there is “no shame in any job and staying at home jobless is out of the question”.
