School inspectors go public with their follow-through findings

Two of the 22 schools have made sufficient progress in the period since the initial inspection that they no longer require three-monthly follow-through inspections. These are Star International Al Twar and The Oxford School.

All other 20 schools will require on-going support from Dubai Schools Inspection Bureau (DSIB) through the regular three-monthly follow-through inspections.

The schools' inspection grading will not change as a result of follow-through findings, but all schools at the next full inspection will have an opportunity to alter the unsatisfactory grading achieved in the initial quality inspections.

A further 10 schools graded as "Acceptable" by school inspectors were also revisited as they were judged to have "Unsatisfactory" features. Of those, three will not need another visit by inspectors. These schools' follow-through reports are not being published in this cycle.

Jameela Al Muhairi, Chief of DSIB, said, "The follow-through inspections demonstrate our commitment to supporting the schools in their improvement. They are also a good way of monitoring progress and for DSIB to feed back to the schools and parents on how the schools have improved or perhaps in some cases not improved. Where schools have not improved, the Bureau will continue to visit until we see an improvement."

A total of 189 schools in Dubai were inspected between October 2008 and April 2009. Summaries of the inspectors' findings were published on KHDA's website. 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.

Just to explain what happens once the inspectors left schools after their first inspection:
• An action plan was drawn up by the school to focus on the immediate steps needed to improve the school, based on the comments made in the inspection report;
• A follow-through visit to the school was made by two inspectors from the Bureau;
• This visit, which lasted for one day, concentrated only on those issues raised in the action plan. It was not another general school inspection;
• A follow-through report was drawn up for parents to see what progress is being made. These reports have now been uploaded onto KHDA's website;
• The inspectors will continue to visit the school until it meets all the recommendations made in the original action plan.