Abu Dhabi - Teachers of Abu Dhabi schools skipped at least 60 classes last year.
Published: Sun 13 Dec 2015, 11:00 PM
Last updated: Tue 15 Dec 2015, 7:54 AM
Many teachers are not attending classes in Abu Dhabi's government schools, annual inspections by the emirate's education regulator have revealed.
"The inspectors found teachers not attending 60 classroom lessons. In some cases, other teachers were covering for the missing ones, but they were only there to watch over students, not teach them anything," said Balqees Al Hemeiri, programme manager at the Abu Dhabi Education Council (Adec).
The good news> Positive relationships between teachers and students
> Safe and secure learning environment
> Good procedures in place for children's protection
> Good school facilities
The bad news
> Individual learning plans need improvement
> Lack of understanding and support for special needs students
> Quality of teaching (should not be just a matter of sitting in class and following a textbook)
> Lack of clarity of the middle leadership's roles in schools
> Lack of professional development for teachers
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Alarmingly, the inspections have also highlighted schools' inability to control violence in classrooms.
Government schools in Abu Dhabi have been given 30 days to come up with a school improvement plan. In all, 262 government schools from across the emirate were evaluated by the Adec inspectors in 2015.
The Adec initiated school inspections in 2013 and this year, six performance standards were used to measure the overall performance and quality of schools. These include: Students' achievements; students' personal and social development and their innovation skills; teaching and assessment; curriculum; protection, care, guidance and support of students; and leadership and management.
"This year represents an important new milestone in inspection, not only in Abu Dhabi, but throughout the UAE. We ... deployed a new inspection framework in order to provide a single measure of education quality for all schools across the UAE," said Mugheer Al Khaili, acting director-general of the Adec.
Innovation and quality of education are at the heart of the Adec's vision for schools in the emirate. Its inspectors came back from the field with a mixed bag of results. There were some good reports, there were some high achievers, but there is also plenty of room for improvement.
Decoding results
On the plus side, safety and security of children are generally good, and so are the facilities provided by schools. Schools that made it to top achievers are generally the ones under great leadership that motivates its teachers who, in return, manage to inspire their students.
What Adec inspectors found lacking mostly revolved around the "teaching culture". Individual learning plans, tracking and analysing students' achievements data, support of teachers from schools' management, dealing with violence in classrooms and teachers' attendance are among the negative findings.
Asking too many questions is one of the questionable practices of teachers. International data reveals that teachers ask about 400 questions per day, and the Adec inspectors found that often these questions leave no room for students to be inquisitive.
"Also, the questions asked by teachers are too easy, giving away the answer in the question, thus not encouraging students to think; this is a lack of opportunity for active learning," stressed Al Hemeiri.
Most of the teachers present at the conference agreed with the Adec's agenda for improvement.
"We put our footing in the right direction, and a lot of schools take their first step towards improvement by accepting their current status," said Sawsan Tarabishy, principle of the Bashair private school in Musaffah, Abu Dhabi.
"The inspection findings today were not a criticism, but an opportunity for growth," she told Khaleej Times.
In her opinion, Bashair school is doing "very well", and the biggest challenge was finding time for both curricula and extracurricular activities. The school tried to improve this issue by adding an extra half an hour to the timetable. "A teacher's classroom time is the world's greatest juggling act," she pointed out.
silvia@khaleejtimes.com
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