ABU DHABI // A new Indian-curriculum school intended to replace two villa schools ordered to close has still not begun classes two weeks after the start of the school year.
The Shining Star International school is not expected to open before April 20 and it could be as late as the end of the month. The Indian school year began on April 1.
“It will take a few more days,” said the operator, Sanjive Khanna. “We are doing a lot of work. We are under a lot of pressure.”
An Indian school community leader said Abu Dhabi Education Council, Adec, had left it too late to provide the premises for the new new school. “They declared it last minute, last moment,” she said. “It was delayed so much, and opening a school is not magician’s work, it cannot come just like that.”
The new school replaces two villa schools deemed by Adec to be unfit: the Indian Islahi Islamic School, with 1,310 pupils, and Little Flower Private School, with 570. More than 1,000 pupils from the two schools are waiting to transfer to the new one.
“They are telling us that all kinds of work is going on inside the school, because the new school is an old Arabic school,” said Jiju Paul, whose son, Jingle, a former Little Flower pupil, is waiting to start Grade 5 and whose daughter, Jemima, will enter Grade 1.
“They are doing some kind of construction inside. We are tolerating that because we don’t have any other options. There are no seats available, only waiting seats.”
Nearly 50 villa schools have closed since Adec launched a programme in 2008 to shut them down because they were operating in buildings not designed for education, or built on land not designated for a school.
“Villa schools are required to relocate to purpose-built schools or close in order to ensure students are safe and can access all of the facilities that good schools have in order to provide a well-rounded, high quality education,” Adec says on its website. As of September, 25 villa schools were still in operation. By this summer, six of these will have closed.
The villa school closures will put further strain on the Indian-curriculum education system.
The Indian school community leader said that although Adec had assured Indian officials that villa-school families would be taken care after their schools closed, it was not very forthcoming with details or updates until this month.
“Some parents were panicking, some were trying to send their families to India, they were trying for that and during that time, still, from Adec, they were not getting any information,” she said.
T P Seetharam, the Indian ambassador, said he had not received any complaints from parents about the delays. On the contrary, most parents were glad that a school had become available, he said.
“If they are able to open by the end of April, that’s good, because until the school has been given permission to do so, there was no prospect of finding a class anywhere.
“I’m sure that parents and students will welcome having a school at the end of April rather than none at all.”
Adec declined to comment.
rpennington@thenational.ae
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