A digital school that seeks to provide an education to one million refugee and underprivileged children over the next five years launched from Dubai on Wednesday.
The Mohammed bin Rashid Global Initiatives is behind the project that will see the first batch of pupils join the school digitalschool.org in September 2021.
Refugee children from countries including Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan are the focus. MBRGI is seeking accreditation for the school from ministries of education in different parts of the world. An accredited school diploma will help pupils get admission in university.
A pilot launched this month with 20,000 pupils enrolled and will run until August of next year.
They will have access to digital learning materials available in Arabic and international curricula.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Vice President and Ruler of Dubai, described the school as filling a "scientific and educational gap in the Arab world".
"We have millions of children who miss years of education due to economic conditions or conflicts. And if no one moves to address these challenges, there will come generations led by ignorance and extremism, instead of leading their homelands with the light of knowledge and knowledge," he said.
Omar Al Olama, Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy and Remote Work Applications, said education was the key to providing children a brighter future.
“We’ve read in history that if you want to change the future of a country, change the education,” said Omar Al Olama, Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence, Digital Economy and Remote Work Applications.
“With Covid-19 disrupting sectors worldwide, 1.6 billion people around the world were left without a school in 190 countries.
“There are refugee children who do not have access to an education and this is a challenge Sheikh Mohammed wants to overcome. If we want to change the future of the Middle East, we have to provide them with an education,” he said.
A tie-up with leading universities will help provide technological solutions in remote areas where pupils do not have access to digital learning tools.
The universities include Harvard, Stanford, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, New York University and mEducation Alliance.
Dedicated teachers will be recruited in the coming months, but those already in the area will participate in the pilot phase.
There are about 30 to 34 million refugee children worldwide, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency.
Pupils worldwide switched to e-learning because of school closures but most refugees did not have the same opportunity.
The Covid-19 pandemic created a major disruption for these children, who were already facing many challenges, especially in terms of education.
In June, the agency said that many refugee camps did not have the technical infrastructure to support online learning.
“Even before Covid-19 refugee children were twice as likely to be out of school as other children, and despite improvements in refugee enrolment rates, only 63 per cent of refugees are in enrolled in primary school and 24 per cent in secondary education,” it said.
“The pandemic risks creating a backslide in the small gains made and creating a disaster for groups such as adolescent girls.”
There are refugee children who do not have access to an education and this is a challenge Sheikh Mohammed wants to overcome
The agency estimated that 20 per cent of refugee girls in secondary school are at significant risk of never returning to school because of Covid-19 school closures.
Dr Paul Kim, associate dean and chief technology officer at Stanford University, said pupils at the digital school will be able to create online portfolios of their work that will help with university admissions in future. Teachers and advisors will also help pupils with university applications.
“When we have the machine learning algorithms and modern artificial intelligence systems and tools available, we will be able to track student performance data in a way that never been possible before,” he said.
“With those kind of footprints that we will be tracking, we will be able to better guide our members with highly personalised learning pathways that can help them reach their fullest potential.”
Prof Christopher Dede, a professor in learning technologies at Harvard University, said the digital school was an opportunity to digitally enhance the education sector worldwide.
“This is the time for a mobile engineer to realise these opportunities for learning and overcome the challenges we face in the present and the future,” he said.
“We can design new ways to learn, teach and assess, which can grow from initial projects in the digital school to prove effectiveness to scalable insights that can influence education everywhere, for everyone.
“We can rescue children who have no opportunities now, to help all of us realise a bright future.”
MBRGI is responsible for other educational projects in the region.
Its Madrasa e-learning platform offers high-tech educational content to millions of Arab pupils in kindergarten to grade 12.
It was launched in 2018 and has 5,000 free educational videos in science, maths, biology, chemistry and physics in Arabic.
This year, MBRGI provided about 400 pupils and 11 teachers at two refugee camps in Jordan with offline education solutions, including Madrasa tablets, Wi-Fi hotspots, smart bags and flash memory devices.
These tools have helped refugees in camps and remote areas gain access to an education, especially as the Covid-19 pandemic has left many without an education.
How Covid-19 has heavily affected the lives of refugees:
More from Rashmee Roshan Lall
The bio
Favourite book: Peter Rabbit. I used to read it to my three children and still read it myself. If I am feeling down it brings back good memories.
Best thing about your job: Getting to help people. My mum always told me never to pass up an opportunity to do a good deed.
Best part of life in the UAE: The weather. The constant sunshine is amazing and there is always something to do, you have so many options when it comes to how to spend your day.
Favourite holiday destination: Malaysia. I went there for my honeymoon and ended up volunteering to teach local children for a few hours each day. It is such a special place and I plan to retire there one day.
MATCH INFO
Who: UAE v USA
What: first T20 international
When: Friday, 2pm
Where: ICC Academy in Dubai
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
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%3Cp%3EFirst%20ODI%20-%20Sunday%2C%20June%204%20%0D%3Cbr%3ESecond%20ODI%20-%20Tuesday%2C%20June%206%20%0D%3Cbr%3EThird%20ODI%20-%20Friday%2C%20June%209%26nbsp%3B%3C%2Fp%3E%0A%3Cp%3EMatches%20at%20Sharjah%20Cricket%20Stadium.%20All%20games%20start%20at%204.30pm%0D%3Cbr%3E%0D%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EUAE%20squad%3C%2Fstrong%3E%0D%3Cbr%3EMuhammad%20Waseem%20(captain)%2C%20Aayan%20Khan%2C%20Adithya%20Shetty%2C%20Ali%20Naseer%2C%20Ansh%20Tandon%2C%20Aryansh%20Sharma%2C%20Asif%20Khan%2C%20Basil%20Hameed%2C%20Ethan%20D%E2%80%99Souza%2C%20Fahad%20Nawaz%2C%20Jonathan%20Figy%2C%20Junaid%20Siddique%2C%20Karthik%20Meiyappan%2C%20Lovepreet%20Singh%2C%20Matiullah%2C%20Mohammed%20Faraazuddin%2C%20Muhammad%20Jawadullah%2C%20Rameez%20Shahzad%2C%20Rohan%20Mustafa%2C%20Sanchit%20Sharma%2C%20Vriitya%20Aravind%2C%20Zahoor%20Khan%0D%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
THE%20SPECS
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Simran
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