Private schools take half of Dubai's Emirati children

Parents making the switch because private schools have more resources and some believe their children do better.

DUBAI // For the first time, most Emirati children in Dubai are attending private schools, and the steady move away from public institutions shows no sign of slowing down, the director general of the emirate's schools authority says. Parents are making the switch because the schools have better resources and some believe their children do better. The students also receive a good grounding in English before they go to university.

Dr Abdulla al Karam, the director general of the Knowledge and Human Development Authority, said at a Dubai School of Government (DSG) panel meeting on Monday that the trend had now reached a "tipping point". Most Emirati students in the other six emirates still attend public schools. Just 29 per cent of Emirati pupils in Abu Dhabi, for example, are at private schools. In Dubai, the trend shows no signs of letting up. Five years ago, just 37 per cent of Emirati schoolchildren attended private schools in Dubai. Today, that has risen to 52.3 per cent.

Officials at the KHDA predict that the number of Emirati students in private schools in Dubai would continue to grow and could reach 60 per cent in the next few years. The continuing movement of Emirati pupils in Dubai to private schools may provide further justification for the KHDA's tighter regulation of the private sector. After many years in which private schools saw little to no government supervision, school authorities in Dubai have increasingly turned their attention to the private sector over the past three years.

In addition to setting minimum standards for schools, officials are encouraging private schools to improve their teaching of Arabic and Islamic Studies. For Dr al Karam, the figures are not necessarily a cause for alarm, but they are "eye-opening". "Whoever is going to provide better education, that's where the kids are going to be," he said. The performance of Dubai's public schools in recent years has not been stellar. No public school scored in the top category, "outstanding", during the emirate's first round of school inspections last year, and many were in the lowest rank, "unsatisfactory".

When Dubai took part in an international benchmarking exam that measures the maths and science skills of 10 and 14-year-olds, public school students fared significantly worse than their peers in private schools, posting scores well below international averages. Ten-year-olds at UAE state schools scored roughly 14 percentage points lower in maths, and 15 points lower in science, than their privately educated peers.

Thirteen-year-olds from state schools fared even worse, lagging 27 points behind private school peers in maths and 18 points in science. Dr Fatma Abdulla, a mother who spoke at the DSG meeting, said parents choose private schools in part because they provided better English-language instruction. "The reason parents are sending their kids into private education is because, to get into a higher education institution, even public higher education institutions, you need to know English and have a good enough standard in English." Dr Abdulla said.

The majority of public school students spend at least a year in remedial English courses before they start university. Amal Alqasim, an Emirati mother-of-three, said she sent her children to the Greenfield Community School because it offered the International Baccalaureate curriculum. Laila Aljassmi, another Emirati mother, is paying a "significant" amount to send her four children to the Dubai branch of the Shajah American International School, because she wants her children to be prepared to enter university directly.