By James Drummond

Alongside the glittering towers and the futuristic visions that are transforming the physical landscape, Abu Dhabi is embarking on a less visible but potentially more profound change: wholesale reform of its school system. This is no small undertaking. The emirate has 305 public schools and 205 private schools serving about 250,000 pupils. Moreover, given the intention to triple the population of the Abu Dhabi city by 2030, the educational authorities are expecting a further 150,000 children will join the school system over the next 10 years.

That equates to 100 new schools. Last year, H H Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the ruler, abruptly gave authority for the school system to the Abu Dhabi Education Council, in effect disenfranchising the federal ministry of education. Education is therefore now an emirate responsibility.

Most dramatically, Abu Dhabi has decided that its school system will become bilingual: maths, science and information technology will now be taught completely in English - for all age groups. The intention is that all pupils graduating from the school system should be able to study in English at either local or international universities.

“The language of science, the language of business is English. We would be doing our students a great disservice if we were not to immerse them in English,” says Rafic Makki, Adec’s director of planning and global partnerships. Dr Makki says Singapore took 12 years to introduce a similarly deep change to its school system but is now recognised as having one of the best performing school systems in the world.

To that end, Adec has hired 1,000 new teachers, 450 of them Anglophone, for the beginning of the new school year. That represents about a 10th of the total. Dr Makki says Adec received 18,000 applications for the 550 Arabic speaking jobs and that candidates were subject to four rounds of interviews. “They met our standards and our standards are high. Our standards are much higher than they were,” he says.

Alongside that, foreign public-private partner companies - there are nine operational in Abu Dhabi - have been given executive authority in the public schools in which they work. Previously, the PPP providers were only consultants, and principals and teachers could choose to ignore them - which they did.

These changes have not been introduced entirely smoothly. The authorities are keen to stress that the public school system will retain an Arabic and Islamic character but teachers say local Emirati parents are concerned and that principals and teachers in the existing school system are sceptical. Most particularly, the changes have been poorly communicated: teachers, parents and students have not been alerted to the depth of Adec plans.

“At the moment it looks as if the expatriate teachers are telling the local teachers what to do. But they have been recruited as part of a programme. Adec should be supporting the expatriate teachers,” says a former teacher.

The task is enormous. Bountiful oil revenues have meant that education has typically not been valued in the Gulf, where soft jobs in the civil service or the armed forces were available and became the norm. Anecdotal evidence abounds of unruly pupils, particularly teenage boys, flouting school rules and ignoring teachers - and worse.

“This year we are revisiting all the policies from the ministry. This [discipline] problem - we recognise it, [but] I hope it is not that big,” says Mugheer Khamis Al Khaili, Adec director-general. Abu Dhabi is not alone in trying to reform a poorly performing school system: Qatar has embarked on radical change and this year Dubai published the results of a first round of schools inspections.