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KHDA sees little or no improvement in private schools

Based on the report, eight schools have been unsatisfactory for at least two years, while fifty have been acceptable for at least three years.

Private schools in Dubai are not making real progress and educational authorities are finding it increasingly difficult to improve education standards in the emirate. A new report by Dubai’s Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA) highlighted the failure of several Dubai schools to improve their ratings in the annual school inspections.

“Eight schools have been unsatisfactory for at least two years. Fifty schools have been acceptable for at least three years. This accounts for more than one third of Dubai’s schools. These schools appear to be making little or no improvement,” read the report released on Monday.

While school owners have been consistently pushing education authorities to allow bigger fee increases every year — the lack of improvement in education quality has been a major ‘concern’ for the regulator.

“The concern is the incapacity of most of these schools to improve. Their inability to evaluate themselves accurately through good quality self-assessment was a key factor,” added the report.

Interestingly, the education regulator provides every school with detailed recommendations and guidelines. Each school also has to provide a self-evaluation report, assessing its own strengths and weaknesses.

“Too many schools rated themselves too highly in their self evaluations. Almost half of the schools had self-evaluation which inspectors judged to be no better than acceptable,” said the report.

The ‘acceptable’ quality of teaching was also highlighted in the annual report — with most schools being recommended to improve to ‘good’ quality.

“Over 40 per cent of teaching was no better than acceptable across all schools. Most of this was concentrated in the acceptable schools. Teaching needs to improve to good quality so that the outcomes for students also improve.”

Arabic learning has also been an area of concern for the regulator, as the report cited ‘repetitive’ teaching styles as one of the reasons for failure.

“Almost three-quarters of schools had shortcomings in Arabic as a first and additional language. In some, there was a slight improvement in speaking and listening but little improvement in reading and writing. Approaches to teaching and learning in Arabic were too often repetitive and did not motivate or engage students.”

muaz@khaleejtimes.com