Tag Archives: UAE United Arab Emirates

What is the role of the State in schooling?

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This is an interesting philosophical question for a Sunday morning. It arises out of my post yesterday questioning a decision of the Labour government to allow a state school to open sites overseas, presumably for profit. Has Labour gone mad? | John Howson

The genesis of that blog  post was a tes magazine piece about a grammar school in London teaming up with a global brand to open sites in Dubai and Delhi Queen Elizabeth’s School to open fee-paying school in Dubai | Tes

What is the role of the state in schooling in the second quarter of the 21st century? When the 1870 Education Act was passed, as one of the Gladstone government’s first Bills before the new parliament, it was to ensure all children received at least some education. There was a feeling that a lack of literacy was resulting in British’s industry losing its advantage in the industrial revolution to countries with better educated populations.

After 1870, the State increasingly became the default position for schooling. Parents didn’t have to use it, but if they didn’t choose an alternative, basically the private sector or home schooling, then attending the local school from five to early teens was required of children. State paternalism or practical politics to allow the economy to continue to be successful?

155 years later, and we have the State, now run by a Labour government, sanctioning a state-funded school partnering with a global company to create school sites overseas selling its brand of education.

Why not allow this? After all, as someone pointed out on LinkedIn, the State too often rescues loss-making industries, why then shouldn’t it make money out of education?

Of course, the State already helps British Industry and commerce make money from exporting aspects of our successful education enterprise, from textbooks to teachers and private schools with sites overseas, as well as private schools bring in overseas students and their fees the government offers help and advice.

So, should State capitalism in this country support state schools opening branches overseas, and those schools making a profit on that work, to be ploughed back into their school in England, thus potentially earning it more cash than the State provides?

Firstly, profit is not a given. Secondly, how will the countries where such schools are located react. Happy not to worry about attracting expatriate workers because there will be high quality education for their children. And, also happy for its own citizens to attend such schools, with a different curriculum to what State schools in that country might teach?

The issue of state schools topping up their funding, whether from parents, donors or now profits, has worried me ever since I taught in Tottenham in the 1970s. School fetes, a feature of those days, run by primary schools in Highgate made thousands of pounds, those run by schools in Tottenham couldn’t match such income. Was this acceptable? At that time, local authorities ran schools and could compensate for this discrepancy. Now, the National Funding Formula make such compensation more challenging, except through the Pupil Premium.

The entrepreneur in me applauds the school making money overseas; the politician takes the opposite view. In this case, I think the politician wins. We need to debate afresh the role of the State in schooling in England, and both its purpose and its limits.

Has Labour gone mad?

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Queen Elizabeth’s School, a selective grammar school in North London, is to open an affiliate fee-paying branch school in Dubai – becoming the first state school to open overseas. Queen Elizabeth’s School to open fee-paying school in Dubai | Tes

I am going to state my opposition to this proposal outright. If we had a sufficiency of high-quality teachers for all our schools, then I might, just might, look on this as part of the export drive using resources not currently needed for the home market.

But the blunt truth is that we don’t have enough qualified teachers for our secondary schools. It is bad enough private schools offering UK teachers jobs overseas, but most of them probably weren’t in the state system anyway.

Here we seem to have a state funded school spending leadership time becoming part of a global brand, and at the very least risking taking a couple of hundred teachers out of the UK system to teach middle class children in the UAE and India.

 Even if the investment is funded by Global Education, a company with a strong base working with universities and higher level vocational providers, I am not sure why a Labour government has allowed the DfE to approve this move?

I do think there should be a policy designed to maximise UK revenue from our strong background in education across the board, but a government’s first duty is to its own citizens, and this move by a state school, along with the growth of our private school’s overseas campuses, risks the education of our own citizens by sucking teachers overseas, and away from schools that badly need them, not only in some of our most deprived communities.

The DfE must make clear both why it approved this venture, and what happens if lots more state schools want to go down this road as a means of earning income to support the homebase.

As regular readers know, I am a strong support of democratic accountability for our schooling, and the academy system doesn’t provide that support to our system. Rather it provides fragmentation and encourages this sort of move all the while costing the system millions of pounds in unnecessary CEO’s salaries and other overheads.

This move reminds me of the Attlee government struggling with the aftermath of the Second World War and restricting sales of cars and other items in the home market to boost exports. Here we have a Labour government opening the doors to sending UK teachers to educate children of parent s that can afford their fees, and to directly set up in competition with private schools.

I might have understood a Conservative government sanctioning this move, but not a Labour government.

Please tell me I have missed some important value here.

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Turtles to drones

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In the mid-1980s, I recall watching primary school children creating the basic computer software required to drive turtles around the floor of their classroom. In doing so, at the start of the IT revolution, they were learning about the basic rules of coding, and having fun at the same time.

Fast-forward a millennium in terms of technology development, but only forty years in human experience, and I have watched the same basic activity with drones. Whereas a turtles functioned in just one dimension, across the classroom floor, drones are multi-dimensional; offering a much wider range of skill development in both coding and driving, as well as performing tasks such as fetching and carrying.

I believe it is important that this type of practical learning activity is integrated into the school curriculum, even at the primary school level. This was brought home to me by the announcement this week from the Minister of Education in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that studying AI would be a required part of their new school curriculum from September. The Minister of Education posted on X as follows:

As part of the UAE’s long-term plans to prepare future generations for a different future, a new world, and advanced skills, the UAE government today approved the final curriculum to introduce “Artificial Intelligence” as a subject across all stages of government education in the UAE, from kindergarten to grade 12, starting from the next academic year. …… Our goal is to teach our children a deep understanding of AI from a technical perspective, while also fostering their awareness of the ethics of this new technology, enhancing their understanding of its data, algorithms, applications, risks, and its connection to society and life. Our responsibility is to equip our children for a time unlike ours, with conditions different from ours, and with new skills and capabilities that ensure the continued momentum of development and progress in our nation for decades to come. Sheikh Mohammed announces AI as mandatory subject in UAE schools

Now, having designed a Teacher Supply Model for the UAE last year, I know that the new curriculum will also require officials to update the modelling process to handle the demands for teachers of the new curriculum.

Inserting AI into the curriculum will also offers opportunities for suppliers already working in this field with schools. One such is Drone City Innovative Education – Drone City the Oxford based start up that already has curriculum materials and practical activities for both primary and secondary age pupils and can also offer training to teachers.

They have also created a series of drone-based books – a series that replaces the tank engines of yesteryear with their successors in the modern world – the first three books are based around the use of drones by emergency services, to illustrate how drones can help in emergency situations.

If you think that isa far-fetched idea, then there is already an exhibit in Sydney’s maritime museum explaining how drones are supporting lifeguards in patrolling beaches, either when the surf is dangerous for swimmers or sharks have been sighted.

I guess it won’t be long before drones are replacing in tasks such as painting the outside of buildings and bridges where expensive scaffolding is currently needed. Most low-level gutter inspections are now it seems carried out by drones not men with ladders.

The curriculum review must ensure that technology is no longer an optional subject but front and centre of the learning experience. When did you last write anything?