Academic year to end early for children

Holidays for young pupils will start on Thursday in Dubai and Northern Emirates, and shorter Ramadan school hours.

DUBAI // Classes for government school pupils from kindergarten to Grade 2 in Dubai and the Northern Emirates will end nearly one month early.

Thursday will be the last day of the academic year for the children as well as those in private schools that follow the Government’s curriculum, according to Hussain Al Hammadi, the Minister of Education.

In Abu Dhabi, the truncated school year applied only to kindergarten pupils, said the Abu Dhabi Education Council (Adec).

During the examination season, which begins next week for most grades, it is common for parents of children in public schools, who are in kindergarten up to Grade 2, to keep them at home, as they are not issued end-of-year assessments.

As that has been the case, “we wanted to make it official” that these children were not required to attend school, said Mr Al Hammadi.

Truncating the school year for these pupils also allows the ministry to reallocate teachers to administration work and monitoring examinations.

“We are using the human resources available from KG1 and KG2 to oversee the national exams for high school this year,” said Mr Al Hammadi.

In Abu Dhabi, where public schools are operated and regulated by Adec, children in Grades 1 to 11 are required to attend classes until the academic year ends on June 23.

Private schools will also continue to operate until at least June 23 for pupils and June 30 for staff.

The academic calendar for Grade 12 concludes when the schoolchildren complete their end-of-year assessments, which start on Sunday and end on June 9 for public schools.

Adec also announced that the daily hours of instruction would be reduced when Ramadan, expected to begin on June 6, overlaps with the end of the school year.

Period times had been reduced from 45 to 40 minutes and the number of periods for Grades 10 and 11 had been reduced from nine to seven, Adec said on Tuesday.

Public schools for boys in Abu Dhabi will begin at 8.15am and end at 1.10pm, while those for girls will operate from 9am to 1.55pm.

Adec said the reduced hours would apply to all grades in public schools during Ramadan. It did not issue any statement regarding private schools.

In Dubai, private schools have been told to start between 8am and 8.30am and finish between 1pm and 1.30pm, according to the Knowledge and Human Development Authority, which regulates private schools in the emirate.

The Education Ministry said it would announce operating hours during Ramadan for public schools in Dubai and the Northern Emirates next week, said the ministry.

Mr Al Hammadi said the ministry would introduce a new curriculum for the 2016-2017 academic year, which would require pupils from KG1 to Grade 2 to attend classes for the full academic year.

“Next year, we’ll have a new plan with the new reform, which will have different emphasis,” he said. “We will change the evaluation and assessment plan from KG1 and KG2 and Grade 1 and Grade 2 to match it and align it with the other grades.”

Presently, only children from Grades 3 to 12 have to take an end-of-year examination in schools that follow the ministry’s curriculum.

“But we are introducing now a new end-of-year assessment to evaluate the holistic skills and competencies of the children in those grades starting next year,” said Mr Al Hammadi, referring to Grades 1 and 2.

Details of the new Emirati School Model, as the minister called it, will be announced in the coming weeks.