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Changing the face of classes for adults

Kathryn Lewis
August 7. 2009 6:55PM GMT
The National

ABU DHABI // On a sweltering morning in Fakhra al Muhairi�s class at the Family Development Foundation, Yasmin, a soft-spoken 17-year-old girl from Somalia named Yasmin sat alongside her 38-year-old Yemeni classmate Aisha Mohammed and her eight-year-old daughter Latifa.

Mrs al Muhairi, dressed in a plain black abaya, was conducting a review of material from earlier in the semester and had devised an activity, as she does on most days. to practise some of the term�s key lessons. Soon the women, who spanned three generations, were colouring paper cutouts that looked like giant gingerbread men and writing essays. The assignment would put some of the key lessons from the term, such as verb tenses, into use.

Yasmin�s ambitions are grander than those of her classmates: she wants to go on to university to become a maths teacher. But under the UAE�s adult education system it will take her more than a decade to realise that aim.

For adults like Yasmin who have little formal education, it takes 10 years to earn a high school diploma � something authorities in Abu Dhabi and Dubai hope to change.

Elsewhere in the world, adult education programmes tend to take less time, allowing adults the chance to join the workforce sooner. In the US, adults hoping to resume their studies can sit a high school equivalency exam. But in the UAE, adult students work through the state curriculum year by year.

At present, the adult education system fails to recognise any distinction between the different types of student � and their different needs and goals.

Older women deprived of the opportunity to attend school as children and who still cannot read or write come to classes to acquire basic literacy. They sit in classes with students in their teens or 20s who have dropped out of school and are now seeking to complete their qualification and to attend university or re-enter the workforce.

Essa al Mulla, the executive director of the national workforce development department at the Knowledge and Human Development Authority, which regulates schools in Dubai, said within the next three years there would be a full overhaul of adult education, shifting the focus to continuing education and training.

�Every year at the beginning of the registration, we have very high numbers and at the end of the year a lot of them have dropped out,� said Mr al Mulla. �We want to reduce the turnover.�

He added that under a federal rule, students who fail more than one year in school are supposed to be removed from regular state schools and placed in adult education evening classes. The KHDA wanted to change this practice, and will shortly begin a pilot programme of days schools for children who are behind.

�You will find very small boys, seven or eight,� Mr al Mulla said, �sitting next to a student who is 18, which is very dangerous.�

Plans to address deficiencies in adult education nationwide were first announced a year ago. Last August, Dr Hanif Hassan Ali, the minister of education at the time, said the ministry would make major changes to adult education with the hope of improving test results.

During a visit to Sharjah in May, Humaid al Qattami, Dr Ali�s successor, reiterated the ministry�s intention to review adult education. However, a year after Dr Ali�s announcement, no concrete plan has yet been put in place.

Bob Turner, the vocational education development manager of the Abu Dhabi Education Council (Adec), said plans to reform adult education in the capital were still in the early stages.

He said Adec intended to address the amount of time required for students to complete high school equivalency � as well as problems with teachers who lack qualifications or have not been trained to work specifically with adults.

In 1971, when the Ministry of Education was established, adult literacy rates were low and there was a serious shortage of schools for children. The Government took a two-pronged approach � to open more schools and launch an aggressive adult education campaign.

Accounts vary about just how many schools existed in 1971; Unesco reports that there were just 74 state schools with 32,862 pupils, a small fraction of the school-aged population. According to others, there were only 28,000 pupils. In 1980, that number jumped to approximately 96,000 � roughly 70 per cent of the population aged five to 14.

Adult education centres have since played an important role in compensating for the lack of schooling in the country�s early years.

Mrs al Muhairi said her mother had not gone to school: �My mother is old, she is 70. She did not go to school because the Emirates in those years, before petrol, they only had Quran classes and not many schools. But she encouraged us, all of us, to finish school and go to university.�

Mrs Mohammed, one of her older students, had never seen the inside of a classroom. �This is the first time for me to go to school,� she said in a low voice, explaining the circuitous road that led her two years ago to the Family Development Foundation, an institution with 14 branches devoted to �sustained family development�.

�In Yemen, in my country, girls were not allowed in schools.� Girls in her province, Shabwa, were expected to marry and have children.

�Coming to school for the first time was a big step,� Mrs Mohammed said. �It�s not an easy thing to start when you�re older.�

Like many other women at the centre, she first had to overcome the resistance of her husband.

�In the beginning he did not allow me to study because I had small kids,� she said as her daughter Latifa, eight, sat silently at her side. When all the children but Latifa were grown, her husband agreed to let her study.

Last year, there were more than 3,500 adult students in Abu Dhabi alone. Seven in 10 were women and two thirds were Emiratis. In Dubai, there are approximately 2,500 students in adult education, two thirds of them women.

The adult literacy rate in the UAE is now 93 per cent, and students seeking basic literacy skills are a minority at adult education centres in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

But there is a high demand for adult education from younger people who have not completed secondary school.

The Ministry of Education has generally not provided nationwide dropout rates, but figures from the Ras al Khaimah education zone � where the 2006-2007 dropout rate was a high 14 per cent for boys in grades 10-12 � suggest that many students are leaving school early.

Mona, a 29-year-old Emirati, left school when she was 15. �When you�re married, you�re not allowed to continue in a normal public school,� she explained. �I wanted to come back to school but I had a baby.�

Like many of her peers, she is juggling responsibilities at home with the demands of school. A mother of six, she brings her youngest, who is under six months, to class with her.

Now she has finished grades 9 and 10, and plans to finish her high school equivalency and attend university. �It was a big thing for me to continue my education,� Mona said. �I felt that I missed something.�

http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090808/NATIONAL/708079794/1010