Pvt education dept lacks experts

DUBAI — The private education department seriously lacks qualified educationists who are responsible for granting licences, assessment, academic authentication and the approval of the private schools' curricula.

By Mohsen Rashed

Published: Sun 6 Aug 2006, 10:13 AM

Last updated: Sat 4 Apr 2015, 6:02 PM

The employees at the department said that they are not fully acqainted with the powers granted to the education zones in this regard.

The Ministry of Education (MoE) has not set any specific standard of work.

"After the MoE had transferred the Director of the Department of the Foreign Schools (DFS) and terminated the services of her assistant, we found out that no one was professionally trained to replace her. Before transferring the director, no substitute or replacement was provided who could be trained on how to grant sanction for licensing," the employees said.

"The assistant of ex-director of the DFS, Rukhssanah, was always depending on her vast experience when doing her work since there was no official standards approved by the MoE despite her high proficiency and accuracy while evaluating the academic programs and curricula," said an official source at the department.

The source said that he got a shock when some schools' files, curricula, and academic programs were passed on to him to be evaluated and sanctioned without reference to the bylaw that covers them.

The source said that when he addressed a top official at the MoE about this issue, the latter had asked him to refer the whole matter to him (the official) as he will take the necessary action.

The source noted that when the case is referred to the top official, an immediate approval to the application of the private school, the applicant, is swiftly issued.

The source pointed out that the only concerned body authorised to revise the schools' books and the study curricula is the Curricula Centre at the MoE.

Commenting on the said statements, the chairperson of the Department of Educational Software and Subjects Preparation Huda Al Safa'ar said: "The MoE is just satisfied with a written commitment passed by the private school in which it pledges that its curricula and textbooks have no information that opposes the general policy of the UAE along with its educational policy. These curricula also should not breach the Islamic religion or even contradict the Arab traditions and customs."

Al Safa'ar added that they were considering the textbooks and curricula accurately in the past, but it became now an overwhelming burden for the white-collar employees of the ministry to revise such large number of textbooks owing to the insufficient number of the officers to perform this mission.

Some private schools send us nearly 150 textbooks, which include pages numbering between 200-700 pages for each textbook as this kind of work needs lots of qualified civil servants, clarified Al Safa'ar.

Al Safa'ar, hence, reiterated her demands to erect a new section to be entrusted such sort of work. "Is it not required to have a control on the educational policy or what? " she asked.

The solution is to have an integrated policy for the private schools in addition to setting standards and specifications by which they can select and approve the textbooks and curricula to be evaluated, she said.

Al Safa'ar underlined that the revision of the textbooks and curricula of the private schools was suspended two years ago as no change happened in this regard.

On the contrary, the MoE did not take steps to resolve this problem awaiting the sanction of the new restructuring.

She called for an immediate solution to this problem in the interest of students.