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Public school admissions in Abu Dhabi begin on February 23

Expatriate students can register starting March 16 while admission age for Kindergarten students raised.

Registration for the 2014-2015 academic year for the new Emirati students in public schools across the emirate will begin on February 23 and will continue till March 20. Expatriate students will have a week to register from March 16 to 20.

Mohammad Salem Al Dhaheri, executive director of school operations at the Abu Dhabi Education Council (Adec), has urged parents to enrol their children as early as possible in order not to miss the deadline.

“Missing the deadline will cause a lot of problems for the parents,” he said, noting that awarding of spaces will be based on first-come-first-serve basis,” he said.

Online registration

This year, registration has been made easier with the new online system adopted by the Adec.

“We have introduced new features like using the Emirates ID to capture all information automatically. This will minimise the time spent by the school and the number of documents required to register a student,” said Walid Nsouli, senior information and communications technology (ICT) advisor at the council.

With the Emirates ID card reader, registration of new students takes about three to five minutes compared to the old registration process of typing all information and scanning documents, which takes between 28 and 32 minutes.

“For KG to Grade 5, we don’t need any documents to be scanned, but for the higher grades (Grades 6-12) we need their last grade report card,” Nsouli explained.

Admission age

In keeping with the new Ministry of Education guidelines, Adec clarified that the admission age for Kindergarten 1 (KG1) at public schools is four years old as of December 31 of the admission year. It will be five for KG2 and six up to eight years for Grade 1.

The entry level for kindergarten previously was 3.6 years for KG1 and 5.6 years for Grade 1 by October 1 of the admission year.

“They changed the new admission age to four years for KG1; the child should be four years old by December 31,” said Thuraya Khalifa Al Salmi, student administration manager from Adec.

This is the new guideline in the UAE and takes effect during the 2014 to 2015 academic year,” she added.

Waiting list

Another system introduced to parents this year is the waiting list e-registration service. Parents who can’t find a place for their child can log on to Adec website www.adec.ac.ae and choose a school according to their area of residence.

“This will minimise the parents coming to our regional offices and they will be informed which school they can go,” Nsouli explained, noting that the new system was introduced to avoid frustration among parents. He said this will also allow Adec to manage the distribution of students especially in new settlement areas.

There are currently 126,000 students enrolled in 262 public schools across the emirate. Students who are eligible to register at Adec schools include Emirati children, GCC nationals, holders of presidential decrees, diplomatic missions’ children, children of expatriates (according to the applicable laws) and orphans sponsored by UAE nationals.

olivia@khaleejtimes.com