ABU DHABI // British teachers specialising in early education and kindergarten are in high demand and short supply across the UAE, recruiters say.
“The biggest demand is for UK teachers because it reflects the nature of the schools here,” said Jonathan Price, managing director of Eteach International, a Dubai-based teacher-recruiting firm.
“The most popular curriculum on offer in the UAE is the British curriculum, and therefore a lot of the owners of those schools and the governors and everyone else and the parents expect the curriculum to be delivered by Brits, especially in the what I would call the upper fee bracket schools.”
In Dubai, 38 per cent of the private schools — or 65 out of 169 — were British curriculum, according to the Knowledge and Human Development Authority’s 2014-2015 education landscape report.
These schools accounted for 33 per cent of the emirate’s private school pupil population.
Also, 154,254 of the emirate’s 255,208 private school students were either in kindergarten or primary school, according to the report. In Abu Dhabi, 16 of the 45 new schools that have opened in the past four years have been British-curriculum. American schools come in second with 11 new schools.
As Adec continues to reform its high school curriculum, which focuses more on science, technology, engineering and maths subjects, recruiters say they are looking to attract more Stem teachers to the emirate.
“That’s the big challenge of course,” said Ash Pugh, operations director for Teach Away, which recruits for public and private schools.
“There’s massive shortages of Stem teachers domestically. So then trying to recruit that very limited resource to places like the UAE, especially in Abu Dhabi, it’s tricky, it’s hard. We’re really ramping up our recruitment efforts and marketing efforts for Stem teachers for public schools.”
rpennington@thenational.ae
