Second batch of school inspection reports goes public

The 120 Government and private schools bring to 189 the total of schools in Dubai that were inspected between October 2008 and April 2009.

The publication of these summary reports on www.khda.gov.ae will be followed shortly by the release of the Dubai Schools Inspection Bureau's (DSIB) Annual Report, the first overview of Dubai's schools ever written.

The reports highlight key information from inspections, particularly the strengths of the school and recommendations for improvement, as well as which of the four performance categories the schools fall in.

In the next year's cycle of inspections, it is planned for the full inspection reports, running to 17-20 pages, to be made public.

The 189 schools inspected do not include Dubai's 31 Indian, Pakistani and Iranian schools, which will be visited in the next academic year.

The breakdown of schools in the four inspection categories of outstanding, good, acceptable and unsatisfactory is:

Public schools
Good, 32; Acceptable, 43; Unsatisfactory, 5. There were no outstanding public schools
Private schools
Outstanding, 4; Good, 34; Acceptable, 54; and Unsatisfactory, 17.
Dr Abdulla Al Karam, Chairman of the Board of Directors and Director General at the Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA), said: "This is very important information for us as an education authority. We think there will be two main beneficiaries of these reports, the schools themselves, and parents.
"These reports give schools an insight into how they can best work towards improving themselves. It is a framework which they have never had before.

"Parents can now be informed about what a school provides, and most importantly what the school will do about its action plan. We think this is a very good directory for new parents who are making choices about education in Dubai for the first time.

"These summary reports give school principals and teachers, school owners and parents the facts they need to start a good conversation about enhancing the education system."

Jameela Al Muhairi, Chief of the DSIB, said:

"These data are what we need to guide us in reforming those areas of education which we have found to have some weaknesses. We can now work with schools, and encourage schools to work with parents, on creating better schools for our children. I was very pleased that before the first batch of 69 reports was published on our website in April, some schools chose to share the information with their parents. I hope this will happen again this time around as we feel it is very important that parents should be given all the information they need to support their child's education."

All inspection findings must be rooted in evidence, and the inspection process itself was subject to quality assurance. Once the inspection was completed, schools were given the opportunity to verify the findings for factual accuracy.

Schools in Dubai are evaluated against seven key quality indicators that have been developed from internationally accepted standards based on research in school effectiveness:
- How good is the progress of students?
- How good is the personal and social development of students?
- How good is the teaching and learning?
- How well does the curriculum meet the educational needs of all students?
- How well does the school protect and support students?
- How good are the leadership and management of the school?
- How well does the school perform overall?
Teams of three to five inspectors spent between two and five days in schools, depending on the size of the school and the number of students. Two-thirds of their time was spent in lessons, observing how well students learnt and made progress, looking at their books and talking to students about their work.

In addition, inspectors had formal interviews with students to find out how they felt about school and how well the school was preparing them for the future. Inspectors also conducted interviews with staff about their responsibilities in school regarding the quality of care, health and safety of students.

In schools where the overall performance is deemed as 'Unsatisfactory', the school will be mandated to implement the Bureau's recommendations for improvement, they will be required to produce an action plan and make the plan available to the Inspection Bureau and to parents. In the case of Public schools, they will do so in collaboration with the Schools Agency.