Number of top schools doubles in five years

The percentage of private schools rated outstanding or satisfactory has doubled since inspections began in 2009.

ABU DHABI // Education standards at Abu Dhabi’s private schools are rising.

The percentage of schools rated outstanding or satisfactory has doubled since inspections began five years ago.

Of the 118 private schools assessed in the last round of inspections, 66 – or 56 per cent – were rated either satisfactory and improving or high performing.

Inspectors group schools in bands: A for outstanding, B for satisfactory and improving, and C for schools in need of significant improvement.

When Abu Dhabi Education Council first conducted Cycle 1 inspections, between 2009 and 2011, only 28 per cent of schools – 35 of 127 inspected – were rated satisfactory and improving or outstanding. Results from the Cycle 2 inspection, 2011 to 2013, showed 34 per cent of 152 assessed schools were in bands A and B.

Of the 118 schools inspected in the first year of the Cycle 3 inspection, during the 2013-14 school year, 19 were rated outstanding, 47 were satisfactory and 52 were in need of significant improvement.

Inspectors have not yet visited the remaining 80 schools. Their results will be announced later, said Hamad Al Dhaheri, acting executive director of Private Schools and Quality Assurance at Adec.

“If we compare results, regarding the three cycles, this shows that in the first cycle, we have 72 per cent of our private schools, they needed great improvement,” he said.

“This went down from 72 per cent to 66 per cent in the second session. Today we witnessed that this percentage has decreased to 44 per cent.”

The final percentage will be known when all the school inspections for Cycle 3 are tallied at the end of this academic year.

The results of the latest inspections were announced at the Private Schools’ Forum.

About 380 school principals and other administrators gathered to meet Adec’s top officials to hear about initiatives involving private schools. The inspection reports have also been released to the schools involved.

“Thirty-nine schools have improved, performance in 15 schools has declined,” said Edward Murtagh, Adec’s division manager for inspection and monitoring, comparing Cycle 3 to Cycle 2.

“The improvement as you can see is slow and steady rather than spectacular. But it does show, I think, a very promising trend in the performance of schools.”

Most private schools are inspected once every two years as part of Adec’s school improvement programme, called Irtiqa’a. Results of each school’s assessment are published on Adec’s website.

The rating a school receives is also used as a factor in determining a school’s eligibility to raise its fees. When a school is not being inspected, it must complete a self-assessment and submit it to Adec.

“I laud schools for these positive results which continue to improve year by year,” said Adec’s director general, Dr Amal Al Qubaisi. “Adec is proud of the Irtiqa’a initiative, which has become a role model in the region.”

The schools also showed overall improvement in a number of performance standards.

According to Adec, common areas of improvement noted by the inspection team at schools include strengthening the curriculum of subjects taught in Arabic; ensuring that all students are appropriately challenged; ensuring consistency of high-quality teaching; improving students’ attainment and progress; monitoring students effectively; developing systematic and rigorous assessment procedures; integrating 21st-century skills in curriculum; and improving schools’ self-evaluations.

Most pupils – 62 per cent of the school-age population – study at a private school. About a quarter are Emiratis. There are 189 private schools in Abu Dhabi, Al Ain and Al Gharbia, up from 184 last year, with 225,000 pupils.