School will be fun in Dubai with a 10X skill boost

Dubai - Regulator is working on a project that aims to revolutionise the education sector in Dubai.

For the past few years, parents and educators have argued that school curriculums have grown "outdated". Students often asked how some of the current school subjects will help them in the future and if it's really relevant for them to study. 
Now, the Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA) is working on a project that aims to revolutionise the education sector in Dubai. 
The Rahhal project will allow students to attend school part-time and use the rest of the time honing their main skillset. For instance, if a student is passionate about and skilled in robotics, he or she can use the remainder of the school hours to train in that area. The pilot phase is expected to begin in September in a number of Dubai schools. 
Rahhal is part of the 10X initiative - a programme by the Dubai Future Foundation where government bodies are required to rethink their regulations, working methods and projects in order to get 10 years ahead of time. 
"When it comes to Rahhal, it's a platform and approach to recognise learning outside the school. It's in simplest way, that's what it is. It's a combination of schooling and homeschooling. It's something that you don't want to get close to, but Rahhal is doing that," Hind Al Mualla, chief of Creativity, Happiness and Innovation at the KHDA, said. 
"The exact definition will limit Rahhal, but it doesn't have one possibility, it has many possibilities. Being part-time in school is mainly one possibility within Rahhal. The rest is work in progress." 
Al Mualla said that part-time schooling is just one of the many possibilities within the projects and more details will be revealed once the pilot phase has begun.
As part of the project, students will also be able to study at two, three or four different schools if they wish to. Pupils can also learn while on the job and can have more than one job to learn and hone their skills.
Parents can also educate their children at home or within their own community. Adults who wish to continue learning can design their own programmes, according to their needs and schedules.
"The wonderful aspect of Rahhal is that it has been inspired by our partners in the community, who we consulted during the ideation phase and who we continue to consult while implementing the initiative," Dr Abdulla Al Karam, Chairman of the board of directors and director-general of the KHDA, said in a Press release last month. "Our partners include parents of neuro-typical students, gifted and talented students and 'students of determination', parents who homeschool their children, education consultants, policy think-tanks, private-sector organisations and other employers, universities, local government bodies, school principals and teachers, qualification and certification organisations, and of course, students."
Al Mualla said there will be a two-year pilot phase for the project, where the KHDA will work to ensure they master the programme.
"The plan is to start on a very small scale with a pilot within a number of schools.
The piloting could even take us outside the school. We have two years to implement it and we will learn a lot during the pilot phase and it will impact Rahhal itself and its involvement," she said.
Dr Al Karam said: "We're now putting the prototypes and processes in place to pilot the programme by September 2018, this in consideration with the beginning of the 2018-19 academic year. In May 2019, we're going to bring our partners and stakeholders together to review what went well and what could have gone better. At that point, we'll be ready to put together future recommendations and roll out Rahhal to all residents in Dubai."
sarwat@khaleejtimes.com

Everything is evolving, except schooling system
Dubai's schooling system is "how it was hundreds of years ago" and a new project that will allow part-time schooling will help revolutionise learning, a KHDA official has said.
'Rahhal' has been launched to ensure that a new approach is used in Dubai's education sector.
"If you look at the schooling system, it's a system that is not evolving as fast as everything around it. You will notice that everything is evolving, especially the technology. But our schooling system is exactly how it has been a few hundred years ago. It didn't change that much," Hind Al Mualla, chief of Creativity, Happiness and Innovation at the KHDA, said.
"If you want to improve the different aspects of learning using the existing system, then it won't be very limiting and it won't take us 10 years ahead of time. So, we need to think a completely different approach. If you follow the same approach, you will get the same results and we don't want the same results, we want something different and this is why Rahhal emerged into being."
The project is part of Dubai Future Foundation's 10X initiative, where government entities are asked to reshape their departments to get 10 years ahead of time.
"10X is a project that enables us, a government body, to get ahead 10 of years of time through looking into our own regulations and look for ways to hack them.
That's one of the ways for 10X to work, another way is to think of your stakeholders. It's meant to make you think why you exist as a government body," Al Mualla said.
Dubai adopted 26 projects presented by 24 government departments as part of the 10X initiatives. The shortlisted projects were evaluated by a panel of experts out of a total of more than 160 ideas submitted by 36 parties in less than 365 days.
"The 10X Initiative, the Dubai Future Foundation, and Dubai's leadership have inspired us to disrupt how we think and how we work, which in turn will bring more meaningful learning and life opportunities to every part of our community. At the Knowledge and Human Development Authority, we were able to simultaneously take part in the Dubai 10X initiative, all the while disrupting our own policies and regulations on an organisational level, and making positive changes to how we approach our work as individuals," Dr Abdulla Al Karam, chairman of the board of directors and director-general of the KHDA, said.
sarwat@khaleejtimes.com

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