I don’t know where to start

I recently stumbled across this article about the education sector from late November. The idiocy-per-word ratio is impressively high.

Over the past decade, the private sector, which consists primarily of for-profit schools, has grown dramatically to accommodate the large number of expatriates.

During the boom years the expatriate population surged rapidly and the number of private schools also increased. However, due to the time required to set up a new school, there was obviously a time lag between the surge in demand and the adjustment of supply following additional private sector investment. This has resulted in a shortage of school availability and rising fees.

Now, essentially for the first time, the expanding private school market is coming under the oversight of government education authorities, particularly in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, in an attempt to ensure uniform standards of quality.

I’ve previously blogged on the issues surrounding such government ‘oversight’. What caught my attention in this sentence is the use of the word ‘uniform’ instead of ‘minimal’. In the private provision of any good or service you are going to have variations in quality and this usually correlates with the price that you are willing to pay. For example, I know that a Kia will not be as good a car as a Mercedes, but I may still purchase the former because I know what I can afford and will thus decide on my best option. Unfortunately such common sense is rarely applied to the education sector, where for some reason the aim is for ‘uniform’ provision where the government decides what is best for you. Trying to make the market uniform will either make schooling unaffordable for many people; reduce standards to the lowest common denominator; or combine both outcomes in a messy ‘third way’.   Introducing ‘minimal’ standards would be more understandable, but again, one must also carefully consider the possibility that such regulation could increase the cost of schooling and thus make it unaffordable for some people.

“The main problem is there isn’t a public option for expatriate children,” says Dr Natasha Ridge, a researcher at the Dubai School of Government.

Hmmm. I’m not so sure about that Natasha. Given the well-documented issues with the public sector schools, I’m not sure how many expatriates would want to utilise that option even if it existed.

“The biggest issue is quality,” she adds, pointing out that wealthier families can send their children to better schools.

Good Lord! Wealthy people can afford higher-quality goods and services? What madness is this?

The Government must ensure private schools “do not take advantage of a captive market”, she insists.

Given what is involved in establishing or enlarging a school, supply is going to be inflexible in the short term.  When there is a dramatic upsurge in demand such as has occured in the UAE in recent years due to rapid population growth, this is going to result in significant price increases. The only reason that there would be a ‘captive market’ in the long term would be if there were barriers to entry in the private education market which restricted new supply. If onerous regulatory or legal obstacles to establishing new schools do not exist, then new competition will move into the market. Government intervention cannot magically solve this fundamental issue, and is more likely to just create more problems.

The Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA), the government body that regulates schools in Dubai, introduced wide-ranging school inspections for the first time last year, pegging fee increases to performance, and painting a grim picture of private education in the emirate.

Such regulatory interference is more likely to discourage further private investment into the educational sector, which will result in less competition in the long run, which helps no-one. Would you start a business when there was a risk that the government would dictate what price you could charge and whether you could increase it if required?

The KHDA’s involvement is also likely to have an unintended consequence: the prospect of future restrictions on fee changes means that whenever the option of increasing fees is available to a school, they will do so to the maximum extent possible due to the uncertainty about their future freedom of action.

KHDA inspection reports revealed a range of problems, from the use of corporal punishment in schools – a violation of UAE law – to poor provision in key subjects such as maths, science, English and Arabic. Only four schools were ranked as outstanding and more than half were judged to be merely meeting minimum standards.

The situation in Abu Dhabi may be worse: there are still some 70 private schools in the capital, catering for low-income communities, which operate out of villas.

The key phrase here is “low-income communities”; what precisely did they expect? Gilded palaces of learning?

Adec first pledged to shut these schools in September last year, but the challenge of finding alternatives for their pupils has made the process a lengthy and difficult one.

Funny that. The fact is that they are evidently the best option available within the budgetary constraints of the parents.  If you shut the schools down you are not magically going to have world-renowned schools offering to take these pupils at the same fee levels as the villa schools.

Despite the “grim picture of private education” though, it appears that it is still better than some options:

In Dubai, half the school-age Emirati population are now educated privately because many parents have lost faith in government schools. In Abu Dhabi, the figure is 40 per cent.

“We have seen a migration of students from public to private,” says Dr Abdulla al Karam, director general of the KHDA. “Now we have half of the nationals in the private schools. The worry is unless major steps are taken to reform the public education system in Dubai then this migration will continue to happen.”

So it seems that despite Natasha’s observations above, many of those who have got a “public option” have voted with their feet. Given this, the question that springs to mind is what on earth the KHDA is doing fiddling about with the private sector? It’s like Robert Mugabe giving a lecture on agricultural efficiency.

Most parents in the UAE also believe they are overpaying for education. A recent YouGov poll found that 88 per cent of parents with children in private schools and nurseries thought fees were excessive.

“It would be a lot less in the UK,” says Gerome Atkin, a Briton who works in construction. He pays Dh28,000 a year to send his daughter to a nursery four days a week.

“It seems like a lot of money, really, for very little. In general the school fees over here are quite ludicrous anyway. What surprises me, especially with the recession and everything else, is that fees have not gone down; in fact, they are putting them up.

“So people who are out here … are possibly being given less money due to the recession … but the price of Dubai in general is still skyrocketing. It just makes it very hard.”

Yes Gerome, it would be a lot less in the UK. However, a significant proportion of your income in the UK would be going to the government as tax so you’re not comparing like with like. As for the “price of Dubai still skyrocketing”, I can only imagine that you haven’t noticed the drastic fall in rents over the last 12 months.

With regard to the continuing rise in school fees, there are a number of factors to consider. First of all, education and healthcare tend not to be particularly cyclical sectors; the demand for schooling in the UAE has not dropped anywhere near as much as that for cars, for example. Furthermore, the recession does not mean that the operating costs of the schools have decreased: teachers tend to enjoy higher than average job security which means that their salaries have not fallen in line with the general labour market. This is compounded by the fact that most teachers here are expatriates and hired from overseas, with all the added expenditure that entails. Most schools also went into this academic year with real uncertainty over the number of pupils they would actually have, due to the potential for expatriate relocations over the summer. As a result they could not simply assume that there would be fewer students and embark on a round of radical cost-cutting. Finally, some of the schools and school groups had previously launched expansion programs in response to the high levels of demand. Just because the demand for these new projects has reduced does not mean that the costs go away. The original plan would have been for these costs to have been borne by new students, but with this no longer possible they will be reflected in increased school fees elsewhere.

Joined-up thinking

Emiratisation has been a buzz-word in the UAE for as long as I can remember: hardly a month goes by without some sort of conference, article or government initiative devoted to the issue. Unfortunately, this attention is not always combined with joined-up thinking when it comes to dealing with the issue.

This week’s announcement of a rise in public-sector pay has left many private companies wondering how they can afford to attract Emirati staff.

The 70 per cent increase in federal salaries is a realignment of a 2008 rise and will not affect nationals’ take-home pay. But it will dramatically increase their pension entitlements and future pay rises, making federal government jobs an even more attractive proposition than they are now.

Given such government largesse, the following statistics are therefore not surprising:

While Emiratis make up 54 per cent of employees in federal ministries, they account for less than one per cent of private-sector staff.

(…)

Because Emiratis command a premium salary for government work and prefer the social and cultural comfort zone a government job offers, many are unwilling to work for less in the private sector, often preferring long-term unemployment.

With an estimated 16,000 Emirati graduates entering the workforce every year, the unemployment rate among nationals is now about 13 per cent. At the same time, the country imports more than 80 per cent of the population to fill 90 per cent of its jobs.

Unlike many other countries, this situation is fairly sustainable economically due to the UAE’s accumulated oil wealth and ongoing oil income. The real question though is whether it is socially and culturally sustainable.

Feddah Abdulla Lootah, the acting director general of Tanmia, which oversees federal Emiratisation efforts, admitted high public-sector pay was a barrier. “Most Emiratis prefer to work in the government sector because of the pay; that is what we are facing now.” However, Ms Lootah added that pay was not the only concern. “They say government is more secure. In private-sector jobs, they always ask about performance and productivity.”

How unreasonable of them.

Tanmia was in the process of drafting suggestions for private companies to attract Emiratis without increasing pay, she said.

This is one of the things that annoys me about so much discussion of this issue: the assumption that it is the private sector that needs to change in order to fix a problem that is not of their making. The private sector is pretty occupied right now trying to create wealth amidst a global recession.

Something else in the article caught my attention:

The International Council on Security and Development interviewed 310 Emiratis between the ages of 16 and 26. (…) A large proportion of Emiratis considered secondary and higher education to be sub-par, saying it did not prepare them for the working world. More than a third decried a lack of adequate English skills as hampering their search for jobs. They also said they needed more practical career advice.

It really isn’t rocket science: equip people with the necessary skills to work in the private sector and don’t undermine the incentives to do so. It’s just a shame that this seems beyond some people.

A three-year-old pilot programme in state-run schools fails to adequately teach Arabic, which is a “breach of the Constitution”, a Federal National Council committee said yesterday.

(…)

In schools using the Madares al Ghad system, classes taught in Arabic have been reduced from seven to five per week and classes taught in English increased from six to 10.

Mathematics and science are taught in English. Less time is spent on rote memorisation and greater emphasis is placed on problem-solving and interactive learning.

The FNC committee’s report said this had “negatively affected teaching the Arabic language, which leads the committee to deem this as a deepening of foreign cultures.”

The question I would pose to the FNC is this: is local culture better served by a society in which the vast majority of its citizens are either unemployed or absorbed by a burgeoning public sector? Then again, logic does not seem to play a large part in these proceedings.

In April, principals of a number of schools under the Madares al Ghad programme complained during a meeting of the FNC committee that the teaching of science and maths in English was undermining the pupils’ Arabic skills.

One said the Arabic vocabulary of younger children was so poor that some could not name their body parts.

I’m sorry, but at some point parental responsibility has to rear its head here. Presumably Arabic is the language spoken at home, so why are they arriving at primary school lacking even the most basic vocabulary? In addition, a third of the week is still taught in Arabic under the new scheme, so what precisely are they doing in that time? Playing tiddlywinks?

The level of debate gets even better:

“Everyone talks about the needs of the job market to justify the need for English language,” said Yousef al Nuaimi, a member from Ras al Khaimah.

“If we’re talking about the labour market, why are some people who speak no English getting paid four times more than doctors who are taught in English?

I’m sorry, but this is just gibberish. Who are these people getting paid four times more than doctors? Are they in the public or private sector? Even if there is an actual case, such faulty generalisation is not a sound basis for national educational policy. If you employ this logic you could argue that as there are some very successful people (Alan Sugar, for example) who did not go to university, it therefore follows that higher education is not useful.

“We have imposed [English] everywhere. We go to malls and salesmen speak in English as if we are in a foreign country. Would that happen if we go to an Asian country?”

Er, quite possibly in many parts of Asia. Funnily enough, a lot of people around the world seem very keen to learn English in order to improve their economic prospects. Google ‘English schools in china’ for example and you’ll get around 47 million results. You are certainly far more likely to effectively communicate with a Vietnamese shop-keeper in English than in Arabic, which is really the whole point. I am not criticising the Arabic language and am certainly not claiming that English is an innately superior language; however, due to historical circumstances English now serves a vital role as the world’s second language. One can fulminate against this fact and the malign influence of foreign cultures, but this really doesn’t help anyone.

Slaphead in a GTI

It is no secret that the standard of driving in the UAE leaves something to be desired. Rarely a day goes by that one does not see some act of motoring lunacy. These include such delights as undertaking; tail-gating; driving ridiculously fast; driving ridiculously slow; and the classic ‘I’m-in-the-wrong-lane-and-need-to-swerve-across-4-lanes-of-traffic-whilst-on-my-mobile-phone’ maneuver.

As a result of these wonderful quirks, and an oddly widespread reluctance to wear seatbelts or use car seats for children, the mortality rate on the roads here leaves something to be desired, with approximately 1000 deaths in 2008. This is as compared with around 3000 in the entire United Kingdom.

This situation is not overly surprising when one considers the demographic make-up of the UAE and the fact that driving culture and education owe much to India, Asia and the Arab World. As infuriating as some of the driving can be, one has to consider the underlying reasons and consider that most drivers are utterly unaware that they are driving like deranged baboons.

This is why I find it particularly infuriating when I see inconsiderate and aggressive driving from those expatriates who should really know better – i.e. from countries whose roads do not resemble war-zones.* Today I had the pleasure of encountering two such individuals. The first was a 4×4 bully who wanted us to mow down a group of pedestrians so he wouldn’t be delayed for 3 seconds as he pulled into a petrol station forecourt. The second was a middle-aged bald man in a GTI attempting to recapture his youth by driving like a tit through the development where we live.**

The sad thing is that cultural exchange doesn’t always work the way we’d like it to.  In an ideal world such interaction would always lead to the best of both worlds: fusion cuisine (chicken tikka masala/thai curry in a pub etc.) or popular culture with a juicy hint of exoticism (Sting/Paul Simon/Slumdog Millionaire etc).  Unfortunately it can also lead to the worst of both worlds. In this case people who should know better deciding to drive like penises because they’ve picked up the bad habits of those around them.

* – Before I get accused of cultural relativism here, I’m not saying that it’s ever acceptable, only that sometimes it’s more (or less) understandable.

**- I know where you live.

“I’m from the government and I’m here to help…”

On the immensely long list of things that irritate me, unnecessary government intrusion into education ranks pretty high. So imagine my annoyance this week at this.

Extreme interference from external agencies that affected the school’s independence has resulted in the resignation of the headmaster.Carlo Ferrario of the Dubai College sent an email to the students’ parents on Sunday informing them that he had submitted the resignation to the Board of Governors, effective at the end of the current academic year.

And this:

Education Minister Humaid Mohammed Al Qatami has affirmed that there is a vision to nationalise private schools in the UAE.He intends to raise the issue at a meeting with the heads of private schools next month. The affirmation came in response to queries at the second ordinary session of the Federal National Council (FNC) on Tuesday. The Minister of State for FNC Affairs, Dr. Anwar Gargash, was present.

It is not private sector education in the UAE that requires the KHDA’s urgent attention, and Dubai College certainly does not need any input or oversight in this regard, as their A-Level results demonstrate. The KHDA clearly suffers from the delusion that they are better equipped to make decisions than both parents and school management. It is an act of regulatory arrogance to dictate fee rate changes to schools and parents.

What makes this entire episode even more galling is that it is not as if the KHDA can justify its interference by pointing to an effective public educational system in the UAE. The public schools do not compare well to Dubai College. Don’t take my word for it, look at the opinions voiced at the Dubai School of Government and the Abu Dhabi Education Council. Oh, and also the World Bank.

According to statistics compiled by the World Bank for its Knowledge Economy Index, which measures the ability of countries to generate and adopt knowledge, the UAE ranks 77th out of 132 countries in education despite having a Dh7 billion (US$1.9bn) education budget.*

And the speaker of the house at the Federal National Council and CEO of Mashreq Bank:

Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair, speaker of the house at the Federal National Council and CEO of Mashreq told delegates that the challenge would not be to fill 100 million jobs, but to find 100 million employable candidates to fill the positions.

“Most college graduates we see are not fit for international standards and we have had to lower our standards and give them a year’s worth of training to make sure they are fit for the jobs we have.”

As you can see, I am hardly voicing controversial sentiments here.

So please KHDA et al., let the private schools get on with what they’re doing and leave their regulation up to the people with the most incentive to care: the parents. You will then be free to devote your energies and resources where they are really needed.

(*It might be simpler to just scrap the public school system altogether and give the parents vouchers as in Sweden. Let the parents choose what their priorities are rather than arguing about it amongst ourselves. Dh 7 billion as a budget – does anyone out there know how many UAE Nationals of school age there are?)