Six years after the Abu Dhabi Education Council began to inspect private schools in the emirate, its efforts to raise standards are clearly paying off. In the latest round of inspections, which take place over two years, seven of every 10 schools were found to have improved. Overall, 55 per cent were found to have achieved a satisfactory performance at the very least.
Of the 183 schools inspected, just 17 were found to be “very unsatisfactory and/or poor”. Seventeen is not a big number, but it remains worrying – a significant number of children will not have access to the education they deserve and that their parents paid for.
What can be done then, about schools such as those 17, which are not doing well despite Adec’s recommendations? One argument, put forward by an educational consultant in our article yesterday, is to simply let the market decide. Now that Adec’s evaluation of each school is available online, parents will be able to see where to send their children and bad schools will just go out of business.
This is a solution of sorts though it is not the only model that could work. Another would be to consider community-led public-private partnership schools, similar to those that exist in expat-heavy cities such as Hong Kong.
Under one version of this scheme, it would be communities that would come together to provide the “private” part of the partnership. The government could provide some subsidy in the beginning – perhaps the land or handing over failing schools to a community-led organisation – while the community would run the school.
Why might that work for schools like the 17 that Adec has just found very unsatisfactory? Schools often do best when the parents are involved. Boards of governors, drawn from the parents of current pupils, mean that those who run the school have a direct ,non-financial benefit in ensuring the education is top-notch. But community-led schools would go even further. They could engage the wider community, perhaps even extending to the companies that employ the pupils’ parents. And communities needn’t be bound by language or ethnicity; they could spring up wherever there was a community of interest.
The Adec inspections regime is working. But for those schools that are failing, innovative ideas are essential. A whole community could easily raise up a school.
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RESULT
Esperance de Tunis 1 Guadalajara 1
(Esperance won 6-5 on penalties)
Esperance: Belaili 38’
Guadalajara: Sandoval 5’
The rules on fostering in the UAE
A foster couple or family must:
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- not be younger than 25 years old
- not have been convicted of offences or crimes involving moral turpitude
- be free of infectious diseases or psychological and mental disorders
- have the ability to support its members and the foster child financially
- undertake to treat and raise the child in a proper manner and take care of his or her health and well-being
- A single, divorced or widowed Muslim Emirati female, residing in the UAE may apply to foster a child if she is at least 30 years old and able to support the child financially
NBA Finals so far
(Toronto lead 3-1 in best-of-seven series_
Game 1 Raptors 118 Warriors 109
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Game 4 Warriors 92 Raptors 105
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Dubai works towards better air quality by 2021
Dubai is on a mission to record good air quality for 90 per cent of the year – up from 86 per cent annually today – by 2021.
The municipality plans to have seven mobile air-monitoring stations by 2020 to capture more accurate data in hourly and daily trends of pollution.
These will be on the Palm Jumeirah, Al Qusais, Muhaisnah, Rashidiyah, Al Wasl, Al Quoz and Dubai Investment Park.
“It will allow real-time responding for emergency cases,” said Khaldoon Al Daraji, first environment safety officer at the municipality.
“We’re in a good position except for the cases that are out of our hands, such as sandstorms.
“Sandstorms are our main concern because the UAE is just a receiver.
“The hotspots are Iran, Saudi Arabia and southern Iraq, but we’re working hard with the region to reduce the cycle of sandstorm generation.”
Mr Al Daraji said monitoring as it stood covered 47 per cent of Dubai.
There are 12 fixed stations in the emirate, but Dubai also receives information from monitors belonging to other entities.
“There are 25 stations in total,” Mr Al Daraji said.
“We added new technology and equipment used for the first time for the detection of heavy metals.
“A hundred parameters can be detected but we want to expand it to make sure that the data captured can allow a baseline study in some areas to ensure they are well positioned.”
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