Adec plans high school vision

Abu Dhabi Education Council assembled about 50 subject specialists, policy makers and curriculum experts to design a plan to improve public education for students in grades 10, 11 and 12.

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ABU DHABI // More specialised maths classes, compulsory third language classes and the scrapping of integrated social studies are some of the ideas for a new public high school curriculum discussed by education officials on Wednesday.

Abu Dhabi Education Council assembled about 50 subject specialists, policymakers and curriculum experts to design a plan to improve public education for students in grades 10, 11 and 12 that will prepare them for entering university without the foundation year, which will be eliminated in 2018, and align academic standards with the Abu Dhabi Economic Vision 2030 and strategic plan 2016-2020.

“We have to bridge the gap between higher education and the formal education,” said Dr Karima Al Mazroui, acting executive director for Adec’s kindergarten to Grade 12. “We want to make sure the students are ready for higher education.”

Officials spent the morning learning about how other countries teach mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry, geoscience, social studies, language, arts and computer science at the high school level and what can be learnt from their educational programming.

“Right now our system, what it offers, it’s not aligned with any other system,” said Sara Al Suwaidi, Adec’s manager for teaching and curriculum.

“For example, the social sciences team found that we’re the only country that teaches integrated social studies at the high school level, while other countries offer specialisations like geography and political sciences, so why are we still doing this?”

Ms Al Suwaidi said pupils would benefit from specialised social sciences courses, with more in-depth instruction on political science, geography or the UAE economy, for example, and how it relates to the region and the world.

“When it’s integrated, you’re not giving every area of discipline enough weight, you’re just skimming them, it’s not studied in great depth,” said Ms Al Suwaidi.

When it comes to maths in Abu Dhabi’s public high school system, pupils are only given the choice of studying basic or advanced. After consulting with higher education officials, Adec was told the maths classes in high school were not “specialised enough”, said Ms Al Suwaidi.

“They said you want to teach general mathematics and advanced mathematics, but that’s not what we need in higher education,” said Ms Al Suwaidi. “We need you to introduce algebra 1, algebra 2, per-calculus, calculus, trig – where are those in your curriculum? So that’s something we’re hoping to do.”

Next academic year, if the proposed changes to the high school curriculum are approved by higher levels of government, public high school students will be introduced to higher-level elective maths courses.

Adec is also considering adding a third language to the curriculum. Under the Abu Dhabi School Model, which is the curriculum of instruction in place for students up to Grade 9, pupils learn half their classes in English and half in Arabic.

Next academic year, the bilingual ADSM will reach Grade 10.

“So far we only have two languages – English and Arabic. Does that meet the future needs of the country? Absolutely not,” said Ms Al Suwaidi. “So we need to introduce a third language.”

With the UAE’s strong trade and diplomatic ties with France, China and Korea in mind, students would benefit from learning one of those languages, she said.

Amal Al Tamimi, Adec’s acting division manager policy planning and performance, stressed these were simply proposals.

“What Adec is trying to do today is to push the bar much higher and to look at different international practices and align also with the Ministry of Education and offer students let’s say more electives, more choices, more pathways that would serve them for their higher education and the labour market, inshallah, later on,” said Ms Al Tamimi.

Adec will take its suggestions to principals, higher education officials and, ultimately, the Government for final approval.

“The purpose of this meeting is to look at other practices, discussion, brainstorming, bringing the subject-matter experts from HQ level from school based level,” said Ms Al Tamimi. “It’s more about just thinking aloud and thinking out of the box. It’s not really about, ‘Today, this is what’s going to happen and it’s going to be implemented next year in schools. No, it’s going to go through a lot of filtering and thinking of it throughly and then where it reaches a proper management decision.”

rpennington@thenational.ae