DUBAI // School owners and senior managers must spend time in the classroom with front-line staff to ensure that the policies put in place to improve the quality of teaching are being carried out.
The Journey to Excellence conference heard that too often senior officials failed to monitor the progress – or otherwise – of programmes created to eradicate poor teaching.
Dr Bogusia Matusiak-Varley, a director of Gulf Education Services (GES), told the 100-strong audience of principals, owners and officials from schools from across the GCC that it was “not enough to simply put in place strategies and plans to improve learning in a school”.
“School owners need to go into the classroom and see if these policies are being implemented in the correct way,” she said.
She stressed the importance of developing systems that teach children through experience.
“There is insufficient active learning taking place, whereby children ask questions and look and explore different ways of doing things,” she said.
“We also see that teachers in some schools do not differentiate between the different levels of children in their classroom.
“There is a tendency for a one-size-fits-all approach when teaching but that has to change so that lessons are pitched to pupils of different levels in a way that they all benefit from.”
Christopher Green, an executive director at GES, said schools in Dubai were provided with high-quality materials and guidance by education regulator Knowledge and Human Development Authority.
“In terms of support and guidance, it is up there with anywhere in the world,” he said.
“However, the issue is that schools don’t fully understand the guidance or misinterpret it and that is why sometimes schools don’t make the progress they should.”
The conference, at Atlantis, The Palm, was organised by Yardstick Educational Initiatives, a consultancy that has provided support for 48 schools across the UAE.
“We go into a school and focus on the areas they are struggling in and use experiential learning to help them improve,” said De Paul Kannamthanam, YEI’s operations manager.
An example of this hands-on style of learning was shown to delegates who had to use a series of small magnets and straws to understand the concept of a maglev train.
“Children learn through engagement and the best way of doing that is to get them to try things and experiment,” said Mr Kannamthanam.
An important aspect of developing critical thinking, problem solving and creativity skills was the willingness to accept failure.
“It’s OK to try something and for that to not work out as you had hoped,” he said.
“That is a fundamental part of having an innovative mindset, because you can learn through failure.
“Teachers should be willing to try things that may not work in the classroom so that they can find out what does.”
Robert Kerr, dean of students at Emirates International School, in The Meadows, Dubai, said he was impressed by what was discussed at the event.
“There is a distinct move away from traditional learning to more problem-solving and creativity-based education,” he said. “That is crucial because having these types of skills will be essential in the workplaces of the future.”
nhanif@thenational.ae