Sharjah improves education and attracts more foreign students to its schools and universities

In recent years the UAE has become an emerging higher education centre, especially within the GCC region, with strong government initiatives, impressive infrastructure, a growing number of international collaborations and a truly multicultural student body. Within the UAE itself, Sharjah is increasingly regarded as a key centre of higher education, with its sprawling University City and the 1997 establishment of two of the UAE’s most prestigious higher education institutions: the University of Sharjah ( UoS) and the American University of Sharjah (AUS). At the same time, public and private primary and secondary education in the emirate is undergoing strong growth, requiring investment and the re-evaluation of priorities.

Oversight

The key oversight bodies of the UAE education sector are the Ministry of Education (MoE), the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, the Commission for Academic Accreditation and the National Qualifications Authority. In addition, each of the seven emirates maintains its own educational body. In Sharjah the education sector is led by the Sharjah Education Council (SEC).

In September 2016 the SEC was restructured with Saeed Musabbeh Al Kaabi named as chairman. At the same time, the Sharjah Educational Zone (SEZ) manages operations for all educational institutions located within Sharjah, including public sector schools, private institutions and adult education. It also grants approval for new private and public schools, as well as performs inspections and quality surveys of all existing educational facilities.

By The Numbers

Government spending on education as a percentage of total budgeted expenditure across the UAE was 21.2% in 2016, second only to Saudi Arabia in the GCC region and above the regional average of 15.6%. By comparison, budgeted expenditure on education in the UK was 11.8% in 2016 and 14.9% in the US. According to a 2016 report by investment bank Alpen Capital, the total number of students in the UAE is projected to grow annually by 4.1% until 2020, from an estimated 1.1m in 2015 to 1.4m in 2020. The UAE also has the highest number of international schools globally, with 511 according to the report.

My Language

Sharjah is proud of its role in early educational developments in the UAE. The first school in the country, Al Islah, was established in Sharjah in 1907, while the first library was also established in the emirate in 1933. Further more, Sharjah became the first emirate to provide education to women in 1942. In more recent years, local authorities have been pushing for stronger Arabic learning.

Sharjah’s government launched an Arabic learning initiative in 2013 called Lughati (translated as “my language”), which aims to further develop the emirate’s education sector using modern technology to support Arabic learning techniques. The initiative focuses on preserving the Arabic language and increasing its use among students through interactive devices that utilise a series of purpose-built applications. After initially being rolled out in Sharjah’s kindergarten and elementary schools, the initiative’s supervising committee began evaluating preliminary results from the first phase in March 2016.

The committee gathered feedback from both students and faculty to determine whether the programme had achieved its fundamental goal of teaching Arabic through modern technology and teaching methods. The feedback proved positive and by mid-2016 nearly all first-grade students in the emirate’s public schools had received a computer tablet – a total of 3088 tablets across 49 schools – which completed the second phase of the project. In early 2017 a Sharjah kindergarten hosted a kindergarten class from Dubai to share the learning technique, and the programme is expected to reach the latter emirate in the near future.

Also in 2016 was the launch of the Lughati Cup, a competition complementing the overall initiative, aimed at improving Arabic language skills of primary school students in the emirate. In June 2016 UAE’s MoE announced the introduction of a new Islamic curriculum that would focus on tolerance and moderate religious teachings. It was implemented across the country in the 2016/17 academic year. Then in December 2016 it was announced that Sharjah would establish an Arabic Language Academy, the first of its kind in the UAE, that will be dedicated to the promotion and preservation of the language.

Reading

In December 2015 the UAE Cabinet and Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, president of the UAE and ruler of Abu Dhabi, announced that 2016 would be UAE Reading Year, with a framework set up for the promotion of reading across all emirates. A 10-year National Policy for Reading was also put in place, supported by a Dh100m ($27.2m) fund, with the aim of getting 80% of children and 50% of adults to become active readers. In September 2016 the SEC announced an initiative to help educate illiterate adults in Sharjah and to provide all the necessarily facilities for them to complete their education.

In 2016 the Sharjah Civil Services Department converted a bus into a mobile classroom that could provide basic education to children whose parents either cannot afford to send them to school or who do not have the necessary identification papers. Those on the bus teach Arabic reading and writing, Islamic studies, English and basic mathematics to children aged six to 15, travelling around different neighbourhoods in the emirate to offer educational services.

Educational Order

According to the SEZ, the number of schools in the emirate for the 2016/17 academic year rose to 232 with the addition of five new private schools – putting the total at 125 public schools and 107 private schools. The UAE was ranked 12th out of 138 countries in the quality of its primary education in the World Economic Forum’s “Global Competitiveness Report 2016-17,” with the enrollment rate for primary education standing at 90.7%. For secondary education the UAE ranked 71st, with the enrollment rate at 92.3%. Overall, the quality of the UAE education system was ranked 10th out of the 138 countries examined in the report.

Most schools in Sharjah are segregated along gender lines. Among the few schools in the emirate that currently have boys and girls studying together are Sharjah English School, a private school established in 1974, and Victoria International School of Sharjah (VISS), set up in 2007. In September 2016 Sharjah schools were reminded by the SEZ to strictly adhere to gender segregation, for instance, by not allowing male supervisors on girls’ school buses.

Private Schools

According to a 2016 GCC report on the region’s education sector by PwC, K-12 enrollment growth in Sharjah is being spurred on by the private sector. In 2006, 69% of total enrollment was in private schools, and in 2014 this had risen to 78%. Yet, while the private sector has seen strong growth, some are still concerned about the quality of education and experience offered by private institutions in Sharjah. With a strong demand for private education in the emirate, the educational space has been filled with many for-profit institutions, which do not always operate to the highest standards.

“While Sharjah is definitely a hub for tertiary education, there is certainly scope to develop the private primary and secondary market far more than is presently being done,” Dean Pyrah, principal of Victoria International School of Sharjah (VISS), told OBG. VISS, one of the two top fee-based private schools in Sharjah, alongside Sharjah English School, was founded in 2007 on land owned by the Government of Sharjah on direction from Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi. The school follows the Australian education model, though with required classes in Arabic, Islamic Studies and UAE Social Studies, and charges roughly Dh50000 ($$13,600) a year in fees. Many of the children of top business and political leaders attend VISS.

“With further development and investment Sharjah would be a great market for the expansion of high-quality primary and secondary private institutions,” said Pyrah. “Dubai is becoming oversaturated in the market and Abu Dhabi is a complex market for investors. Sharjah has many schools but there are few at the middle and high end of the market. As such, Sharjah has a lot of opportunities. Also, it is near the Northern Emirates, which do not have as many quality private schools and definitely needs access to more of them,” he added. According to Pyrah, in terms of private education, Dubai is one of the most sophisticated and efficiently educated markets in the world. “It is a good model for what can be done in Sharjah,” he added. Pyrah believes that there is still room for more robust regulations of the private education space in Sharjah, in order to ensure that the highest quality practices are followed. “Right now we are under the MoE in Sharjah because Sharjah does not have a separate body to regulate the private sector,” Pyrah told OBG. “This needs to be changed because the ministry is in charge of public education and does not have sufficient capacity to also regulate the private space. It is very different, and we need a firm body to control it.”

In 2014 inspectors visited some of Sharjah’s then 96 private schools and that found parents were being charged excessive sums to have their children placed on the school’s waiting list. Inspectors also found incidents of private schools employing unlicensed teachers and operating in unlicensed buildings. “No school is above the law,” Hessa Al Khaja, head of special and quality education at SEZ, told local media.

Private Fees

Education costs in the private sector can be a heavy burden on households. According to the Sharjah Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the annual fees per child for local private kindergartens – with transportation – were found to be between Dh3900 and Dh4900 ($1062-1334) per year; meanwhile for local private primary school with transportation, fees were between Dh4700 and Dh6300 ($1280-1715) per year. Meanwhile, a local private secondary school with transportation costs between Dh7700 and Dh10,500 ($2096-2722).

The rates are far higher for international schools, roughly Dh15,000-18,000 ($4083-4900) per year for a kindergarten, Dh20,000-23,000 ($5445-6262) for primary education and up to Dh32,700 ($8903) for secondary education, all including transportation. According to an August 2016 article by Gulf News, Dubai’s English language news site, parents across the UAE with more than one child attending school might need to set aside between 30-40% of their annual income just to pay for their children’s education.

In order to rein in expenses and better regulate the sector, the SEZ announced in September 2016 that schools in Sharjah would not be allowed to arbitrarily increase their tuition fees. Fee increases need approval by the authorities and that will be granted only under certain conditions, such as for the development of school infrastructure.

Schools could face penalties and fines if they were found to be arbitrarily raising bus fees, for example, without the necessary approval, SEZ officials have warned. This announcement followed years of private schools raising their fees annually, sometimes by as much as 23% every year, leading to high levels of discontent among parents.

Uae-Model Universities

As part of UAE Vision 2021, one fundamental goal is for the majority of Emirati students to attend university, with those not choosing that path to be offered vocational training opportunities instead. Sharjah now boasts two of the largest and most important universities in the country, one of which is UoS.

UoS was founded in 1997 by Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi and is located on the outskirts of Sharjah, a short distance from Sharjah International Airport. In the 2015/16 academic year, UoS had a total enrollment of 13,811 students: 12,169 Bachelor degree students, 1002 graduate students and 640 completing undergraduate diplomas. UoS offers the largest number of accredited programmes of any educational institution in the UAE. The university offers over 85 academic programmes across a substantial number of fields and disciplines, ranging from molecular medicine to fine arts, engineering, communications, law and Islamic studies.

Recent additions to the variety of degrees on offer include biotechnology, Islamic finance and renewable energy engineering. The university also offers students joint PhD programmes with Ecole de technologie superieure in Montreal as well as joint masters programmes with Paris Diderot University and the Royal College of Surgeons in London.

UoS now engages in 140 academic and research partnerships with universities and institutions around the world. “Since its inception in 1997, UoS has increased dramatically in both its physical size and in the number of its colleges and programmes, especially with the opening of the College of Medical and Health Sciences and the launching of three campuses and two satellite locations in Sharjah,” Hamid M Al Naimiy, Chancellor of UoS, told OBG.

Among the educational facilities that are part of UoS is the University Hospital Sharjah, completed in 2011 and located within the university’s medical and health sciences cluster, which is the first teaching hospital in the UAE. The University Dental Hospital, which also opened in 2011, was the first and is still the largest dental hospital in the UAE and the region.

Skyline University College, which was founded in 1990, is another strong option for Emiratis and other students looking to study in Sharjah. The school offers a number of degrees in travel and tourism management, international business, marketing and retail management, finance and public administration.

An American Model

Also founded in 1997, AUS is the other of Sharjah’s two main universities. The notfor-profit institution, accredited by the Commission on Higher Education in the US, is located in Sharjah’s University City and had a student population of more than 6000 for academic year 2016-17.

It offers 26 undergraduate programmes, with a strong focus on engineering, business administration, and architecture and design, along with 14 master’s degrees, half of which are in the College of Engineering. Currently, 47% of majors at AUS are in engineering. At the autumn graduation ceremony in 2016, 545 undergraduate and graduate students were presented with their degrees.

According to the annual QS World University Rankings published by Quacquarelli Symonds, AUS was ranked 7th overall in the Arab region for 2016. Times Higher Education also ranks universities globally, and placed AUS 12th among the most international universities in the world in September 2016. The Times Higher Education ranking takes into account the proportion of international students and international faculty members, as well as research papers published with at least one international co-author. The only other university in the country to make the top 20 in this ranking was UAE University’s male campus in Al Ain. “Our graduates come from all over,” Leland Blank, interim provost and chief academic officer at AUS, told OBG. “About 80% come from within the UAE, with about 16-17% nationals. There are 100 countries that are represented on campus, and our faculty this year is from 52 nations of the world.”

Competitive Studies

The establishment of Sharjah as a major destination for higher education in the region has not come about by accident. From the very beginning Sharjah’s leadership, headed by Sheikh Sultan bin Mohammed Al Qasimi, has pushed for the development of higher education, offering land, investing heavily in infrastructure, and supplying universities with the support needed to get up and running. This was key in the early years when potential faculty and students needed to be convinced that the fledgling higher education institutions were places that would quickly grow in reputation and offer the kind of academic rigour found in top universities around the world. The universities also pushed early and hard for international accreditation.

“International accreditation was vitally important to AUS at its inception. Maintaining accreditation for our business, architecture and engineering degrees in-country and internationally remains a key point,” Blank told OBG. He added that while the accreditation process is time consuming and labour intensive, it is very important in the region, “not just for international connectivity, but also for parents who wish to know that the quality is the best, otherwise they may send their sons and daughters somewhere else.”

AUS is now ranked among the top 500 universities in the world, according to the QS World University Rankings, with UoS in the top 700, joining four other UAE higher education facilities on the list. According to the World Economic Forum’s “Global Competitiveness Report 2016-17,” out of the 138 countries examined, the UAE came in 34th overall regarding its higher education and training offerings.

However, enrollment in tertiary education is relatively low at approximately 22%, highlighting the large percentage of UAE students who still prefer to go abroad to study. This is something that the UAE is working to change by persuading more nationals and residents to stay in the country to study, and also by targeting to attract more students from abroad.

Rti Park

In 2015 AUS established AUS Enterprises, a new holding company that would help develop projects for the university. Among these projects is the contemporary AUS Research, Technology and Innovation (RTI) Park, which is slated to be completed in 2018. The educational park, which will be located close to the university, is being set up as a creative community modelled after areas like neighbouring emirate’s Dubai Internet City and Dubai Media City.

RTI Park will cover an area of roughly 1.86m sq metres, with space for around 180 companies, as well as residential properties and retail. The park will focus on a number of key education and employment areas likely to be in future demand in Sharjah and the region as a whole. These include water technology, industrial design and architecture, transportation and logistics, energy, environment and digitisation. The aim is to establish joint ventures with major local and international companies in these areas, with some big players already showing an interest. IBM has expressed interest, as well as smaller start-ups – the latter being important to foster as they will bring in future growth as they expand. Proximity to the universities is seen as fundamental.

Speaking at the January 2016 graduation ceremony of AUS, the university’s chancellor, Björn Kjerfve, explained the importance of the project. “AUS Enterprises will play an integral role in creating synergy between AUS, its faculty and students, and the many corporate and research organisations to be located in the RTI Park. These and other related activities conducted in the realms of industry and academia will not only raise the university’s profile but will, more significantly, contribute towards the reputation of the emirate of Sharjah as an education and research and development (R&D) hub,” he said.

Outlook: 

Sharjah has made substantial strides over the previous two decades to establish itself as an attractive and noteworthy centre of higher education, with the outcomes of these efforts increasingly visible today. With a greater push towards R&D in the future, the role that higher education will play in the emirate is only expected to grow. Pre-tertiary education enrollment figures are relatively strong, and while work needs to be done to better regulate the significant private sector involvement, the education sector as a whole is largely in steady standing.