The Abu Dhabi Education Council (ADEC), an independent corporate body set up in September 2005, is attempting to change the face of public education in the Emirate through a public-private partnership (PPP) with international education operators. The project, with an estimated annual budget of around $35 million, aims to upgrade the level in public schools by developing educational plans, curricula, resources and activities whilst enhancing teaching performance through continuous training.

 

In September 2006, the PPP pilot project was officially launched in 30 K-5 Schools of which 12 are located in Al Ain, 12 in Abu Dhabi and 6 in Al Gharbiya. “How do we fulfill our objectives? Is it by privatizing schools? Do we create independent schools or do we partner with private international education companies? The decision was to partner with private operators who had proven their competency in other countries,” Mubarak Al-Shamesi, Director General of ADEC said. Of the many that had applied, four operators were chosen: CfBT, Intered/Sabis, Mosaica and Nord Anglia. Adec’s media office informed The Middle East Educator that two different operators will operate 30 new schools for grades 6 to 9 for a period of 3 years beginning next September. These school locations and their distribution among the new providers are yet to be determined. “We are trying to give operators the chance to start before the end of the current year, so as to familiarize themselves with the environment, principals and students, while leaving the summer for preparation in terms of staff, equipment, etcetera,” Al Shamesi said.

 

All operators are required to abide by curriculum standards designed by Tafe Global, the New South Wales Department of Education and Training, which put together a curriculum based on international best practices. For the first time, the standards were not just made for subject matters like Math, Science, English, and Social Studies, but also for Music, Sports, PE, Health and Safety.  e bidders also had to answer detailed questions about organizational capacity, increasing student achievement, increasing parent and community involvement in public education, strengthening the quality and quantity of Abu Dhabi national instructors and administrators, and preserving and promoting heritage and culture. As for the actual curriculum to be taught in those schools, Dr. Hanif Hassan, Minister of education for the UAE said: “The students will learn English, Science and Math — all in the English language. Students will also be taught Arabic, Islamic Studies and National Studies, according to the ministry’s curricula using new methods for teaching and learning.”

 

According to Al Shamesi, education providers may use their own curriculum, textbooks and professional development (PD) techniques with teachers. “Provider “X” might decide to use 6 books, but he realizes that one of his schools is weaker than another, so he may add extra staffing, use different educational resources or choose to concentrate on PD. ADEC does not interfere here,” Al Shamesi said. ADEC assists by helping the operator understand the system better and make the necessary adjustments. “We do check the books to see if they are suitable for students in terms of culture or religion. But today, learning is not dependent on books, so we need resources and a staff professionally developed to deliver in English,” Al Shamesi said.

 

However, what role does ADEC play in the PPP project implementation and who is in control of it? “In order for the council to make sure that the operator meets its requirements, we had to take several steps beginning with the development of the curriculum standards which all operators have to abide by,” Al Shamesi said. ADEC then hired a monitoring agency, Penta International, to evaluate partnership schools in the emirate. Penta International undertakes the evaluation of the needs of the partnership schools as well as tests the academic performance of the students in Abu Dhabi, Al Ain and the Western Region. “Rather than the operator coming to me and saying this school is not functioning, or this principal is not meeting our expectations, I have a monitoring agency that will give me a second opinion,” Al Shamesi said. Penta, which conducts both scheduled and unscheduled visits, also assists the staff for both operators and schools. “We don’t want to wait until the end of the contract or the end of the year to measure progress. We find out where the gaps are early on and we fix them,” Al Shamesi said.

 

On the strength of their international education record, Nord Anglia, a UKbased education provider, won a contract to operate six primary schools in the emirate for three years with a contract estimated at $5.7 million per annum. The company already offers advice and management services to schools, colleges and governments in a number of countries including Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. It actually generates more income outside the UK, such as in Eastern Europe, the Far East and now in the Gulf. “Around $134 million of our $230 million in turnover will come from overseas operations,” said David Singleton, Principal Education Advisor with Nord Anglia. The company, for example, is now developing a curriculum for Chinese children based on an English curriculum but very much within the values and beliefs of the Chinese. “They are very sensitive to cultural issues. There is strong commonality in China, Korea, Scandinavia and the UK, with emphasis on learning through play, role play and engaging the children,” said Ann Yeonus, Education Advisor for Nord Anglia. She added that wherever Nord Anglia operates, the idea is always to create continuity after their contract ends. “Like the old saying ‘Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day; teach him how to fish and you will feed him for a lifetime’,” Yeonus said.

 

For Abu Dhabi’s PPP project, Singleton said that the Australian curriculum standards offered primary school students a modern practice with two strong elements: a core curriculum taught entirely in English and the removal of textbooks where teachers dominate the learning environment. Like the International Baccalaureate program, the curriculum is engaging and takes advantage of the fact that children learn first through play by exploring their environment. “It was obvious from the start that our biggest role was actually training and educating the teachers, especially when a significant aspect of the project is to have a high proportion of national teachers,” Singleton said. Nord Anglia has 30 advisory teachers who model best practices and 24 teacher assistants who support national teachers and advise them in the classroom. “The two keywords in this project are Sustainability, i.e. to develop a functioning model when we leave and the second is Capacity Building, where performance management plays a role in succession and promotion,” Singleton added.

 

Nord Anglia’s project director Helen Kavanagh said teachers of Arabic are now requesting to share in the pedagogies of training and teaching for English teachers. “English is the first big mountain, then a new curriculum and new pedagogies. We have textbooks, but not for page by page and day by day usage and we now have assessment reporting instead of tests,” Kavanagh said. With principals being mostly Emirati women, Nord Anglia has also created a support group around them, gaining their trust and confidence and easing any fears they might have. “This is their school; we are here to help and not take it away from them.” The challenge was also to gain the confidence of all stakeholders i.e. the government, teachers, students, parents and the community as a whole. “Parents really care about their kids’ education and it shows in their 80 percent attendance during school meetings,” Kavanagh said.

 

The new project is activity-based with the assessment matched to the child’s level, as compared to everyday homework using textbooks. “That’s the big shift. A lot of the PPP project work is about matching the level of difficulty in the classroom. Before you added to 10 and then 20 and took homework to solve math problems. Now, depending on their level, kids might be sent home with varying hands-on tasks,” Yeonus said. She gave the example of a teacher who was teaching students to jump on numbers 4, 6 or 9 spread on the ground. “Here’s a great example of a visual, physical and oral application of a new teaching method which works miracles compared to traditional learning,” Yeonus said. In this system, catering to individual needs and levels helps retain slow learners in the same class as high achievers, where as before weak students were kept back a year.

 

Building on its experience as the contractor for the British government to carry out school and quality inspections, and with Singleton being an ex-deputy director of Ofsted (the Office for Standards in Education), Nord Anglia has also developed an inspection framework for Abu Dhabi that starts with an evaluation project for Adult Education Centers (literacy and acquisition of English). These are centers for students who left school early and did not complete their education. “When ADEC rolls out all 300 schools, it will be very demanding to keep this high quality education,” Yeonus said. The Emirate will need to have an inspection body to check if every student is doing well enough, and if the teaching supports the curriculum or whether teachers have the proper mechanics. “We hope to devise a model similar to the UK, which is based on schools’ self- evaluation, enabling them to know and manage themselves.”

 

CfBT (Centre for British Teachers for Education), which won a contract to take over the management of eight schools and four kindergartens in four clusters located in Abu Dhabi, Shahama, Al Ain and Madinat Zayed, began teacher training workshops for about 400 teachers, principals and senior management as a first step towards facilitating school improvement last June. “Quite a number of teachers could speak English to some extent. Children don’t need the confidence to try but teachers do as they have some sensitivity towards making mistakes,” said Jan Reid, director of the PPP program.

 

Teachers with CfBT undergo 2 to 3 professional development sessions per week, attending training workshops on teaching methodology, behaviors, strategies and curriculum development. “The teachers in the schools are working so hard, they are the ones who are making the change,” Reid said. CfBT is also inviting principals to a big conference in the UK in June. “Although not part of the contract, it is an opportunity for the principals to go visit some UK schools and head teachers, share ideas, look at certain areas of teaching practice and hopefully enjoy themselves,” Reid added. Within their Learning Resource Center, CfBT is training teachers on how to use interactive whiteboards and introducing English resources and English reading books. “One of the problems in introducing English books is that you have to get the right level and density. If English is your second language and you opened a math book with far too many instructions in English, you wouldn’t know where to start,” Reid said.

 

Introducing Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is part of the project requirements. Interestingly enough, some schools under CfBT had more than a dozen interactive whiteboards, which were being used cosmetically. “We are installing networks, ICT equipment and lots of other technology which we’re training the staff on, including the principals,” Reid said. CfBT’s 12 schools are currently connected via Intranet, enabling teachers to share lessons and best practices, while students are wirelessly connected to the internet but access is controlled to prevent misuse.

 

Andrew Herriot, the regional director of CfBT said that the organization had done a PPP project with Qatar and is already seeking similar opportunities with other governments. “Qatar was our first project with PPP in 2002. Under the auspices of Sheikha Mozah, we helped the Supreme Education Council develop the new curriculum standards for teachers of math and sciences from KG to grade 12,” Herriot said. As a result of that, CfBT was invited to train a cadre of teachers with a Postgraduate Degree in Education- a British teacher qualification. “In the first year we worked with the University of Southhampton to develop a course for about 17 teachers who, after graduation, would be able to teach in the so-called independent schools using the curriculum we devised,” Herriot said. CfBT also helped develop programs that all providers involved in running independent schools would be able to use. The center also headed training sessions held for senior leaders, principals, middle managers, heads of departments, subject leaders and others. “On the strength of our expertise, we bid for all 30 schools in the UAE PPP when we arrived in 2006. This, for us, demonstrates commitment,” said Herriot.

 

So what is the role of the UAE’s ministry of education in all this? An essential one it seems, as both H.E. Dr. Hanif Hassan, Minister of Education and Mohammed Salem Dhahiri, head of the Abu Dhabi Education Zone are board members of ADEC. “There is also close cooperation between ADEC’s employees and MoE employees, to discuss PPP evaluation, share studies that are conducted by ADEC or the ministry, and exchange expertise,” Al-Shamesi said.

 

That leaves the question of when the rollout phase of the 300 schools will begin. “I cannot say that I can proceed with the rollout until we look at each project in ADEC and study it before we proceed. I am satisfied with the progress being made with the partnership, but will I be 100% convinced once the school year is over? This is hard to say,” Al-Shamesi said. As for grades 10-12, Al-Shamesi indicated that ADEC is planning to launch the program in 2008. “Some people might say that since we started with these operators then we need to give them the next contract, but I say no. We will say that any operator in the PPP will continue using the standards until his contract ends in three years,” Al-Shamesi indicated. Are three years enough? “I don’t know,” said Reid, “ All operators are working to have a sustainable model, but I would hate to think that teachers who are now working very hard may find that at the end of three years they are unable to sustain their efforts.”

 

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K-5 operators for ADEC

The SABIS® School Network, through its managing arm Intered s.a.l., was awarded a contract to manage 6 kindergarten and primary schools in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi through a public-private educational initiative of the Abu Dhabi Educational Council in September 2006. The network has over 30 years’ experience in the UAE. SABIS® is a college-preparatory education system that consists of 41 member schools in 14 countries, educating over 33,000 students worldwide. SABIS is offering educational management products and services to a membership network of private and public schools. School children in the SABIS Network are known and expected to receive a rigorous and challenging education following a 120-year-old tradition when the first school opened in Shoueifat, Lebanon.

 

CfBT Education Trust is a leading education consultancy and service organization. Its objective is to provide education for public benefit both in the UK and internationally. It has been awarded the management of 12 K-5 schools as part of the ADEC PPP project. Established 40 years ago, CfBT Education Trust now has an annual turnover exceeding £100 million (nearly $200 million) and employs more than 2,000 staff who worked in 40+ countries supporting educational reform, teaching, advising, researching and training. As a nonprofit organization, CfBT commits around £1million of its surpluses every year for practice-based educational research. Among its many projects are a national HIV/AIDS prevention program in Kenya and a new curriculum for the Qatari Supreme Education Council.

 

Mosaica Education was contracted to manage six Abu Dhabi schools in the Abu Dhabi school reform initiative under ADEC. Mosaica was awarded two clusters of schools: one cluster in Abu Dhabi and a second cluster in Baniyas, a suburb of Abu Dhabi. Mosaica Education is a leading US educational service provider, managing 90 charter school programs in eight states, the District of Columbia and Qatar. Serving over 18,000 students, Mosaica Education operates charter schools, which emphasize strong basic skills, an inter-disciplinary curriculum and extensive use of technology.

 

Nord Anglia Education PLC is a leading provider of education, training and childcare within the UK and overseas. It is the only company listed on the UK stock exchange offering educational services. It offers a British-style education with a curriculum based on the National Curriculum of England and adapted country by country to meet local culture and local conditions. They currently teach over 30,000 pupils and employ over 500 teaching staff. NAE PLC was awarded a contract to run six schools in Al Ain as part of the PPP project. The company has been operating international schools since 1992 and currently operates schools in Bratislava, Budapest, Prague, Shanghai and Warsaw. It also opened an international pre school in Seoul, South Korea, in March 2007 and is due to open two further schools in China.

 

 

PPP REGIONALLY

Egypt

The Egyptian Education Initiative (EEI) is a public private partnership between the government of Egypt and the World Economic Forum’s member communities. The initiative supports Egypt’s overall education reform e orts and maximizes the potential for collaborative public private partnerships (ppp) to achieve its goals. Since the annual meeting in 2005, the WEF has been working with the government of Egypt to identify areas of priority and potential opportunities for private sector collaboration. The initiative’s objectives are to facilitate educational reform in Egypt by enhancing the creativity of teachers and students through the effective use of ICT, while developing the capacity of the local IT industry. This includes establishing a virtual learning community and preparing all students in schools and universities to join the digital workforce. Last year, the Egyptian government made a concerted effort to increase ppps with government-offered tenders for the construction and operation of 50 schools in a program aiming to build 2210 new schools.

 

Qatar

Established in 2002, the Supreme Education Council serves as the primary authority on education policy in Qatar. The Qatar education reform initiative is attempting to create a modern, world-class public school system in the country based on:

•AUTONOMY: allowing schools and teachers to be innovative in their approach within a framework of international curriculum standards.

•ACCOUNTABILITY: implementing a transparent assessment system to hold all stakeholders responsible for the success of students.

•VARIETY: encouraging different kinds of schools and instructional programs.

•CHOICE: allowing parents to select the school that best fits their children’s needs.

Within that scope, an independent school is a government-funded school that is granted autonomy to carry out its educational mission and objectives. The first group of 12 new independent schools began operation in September 2004 and 21 more schools opened in September 2005. The total number reached 65 with 19 new independent schools joining September 2006. School operators could be educators, parents, private education-management organizations or schools.

 

Jordan

In 1999, His Majesty King Abdullah II articulated his vision that the economic future of Jordan would be found through successful participation in the global knowledge economy, and more particularly in the value-added information technology industries. Jordan is developing a national education strategy from pre-primary to secondary education. It will commit $380 million to the education reform for knowledge economy (Erfke) program in which the Jordan Education Initiative (JEI) is the ICT core component. The JEI is a public-private partnership launched in June 2003 with the support of the WEF, and is being marketed as a mechanism for enabling and accelerating social and economic development across the region. It aims at developing an e-learning curriculum and piloting in 100 “discovery schools”. Private organizations are investing around $15 million, in addition to $5-$6 million from the government.

 

By Hadi Khatib

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