13th June 2011 9:00
By Blue Tutors
A report on ‘The National’ website suggests that an alarmingly high number of pupils in the United Arab Emirites receive private tuition after school, and that some school teachers are behaving in a questionable way. Private tuition is banned in the UAE, but that doesn’t stop it from taking place, and a recent survey shows that tuition is more widespread than anybody may have realised.
The survey was conducted by Samar Farah from the Dubai School of Government, and took in 180 current students at UAE university. It showed that 66% of students had undertaken private tuition in year 12 (before university), the majority of whom attended a public (state funded) school. Just considering Mathematics, 75% of boys said that they attended extra lessons, and 48% of girls said the same thing. However, Ms. Farah felt that a more worrying statistic was that 53% of boys received tuition after school hours from their daytime teachers.
In Dubai VISA holders are only allowed to engage in paid work provided by their sponsor, and any teacher caught tutoring after school could face serious legal action. The average teacher’s salary is around Dh 7,000 per month, but a private tutor can expect between Dh 100 and Dh 200 per hour, so teachers can double their monthly salary through tutoring. The report suggests that some teachers may even compromise the quality of school classes in the knowledge that it will increase the demand for their tutoring services afterschool.
The official line of the public school system is that, if pupils are attentive in class, then there should be no need for extra tuition, and it’s emphasised that the government is reacting to the situation by providing extra classes in school, and setting up peer tutoring schemes, where the more gifted students tutor struggling friends. However, Ms. Farah indicates that it’s not possible to completely ban private tuition, but that it should be much better regulated.