The UAE education news cycle over the past 5 weeks has been relentless, as the race to be first has ignited a spate of click-bait headlines, in amongst the genuine stories about the impact of COVID-19 on the sector.
Parents, teachers, investors, school groups and regulators have been forced to confront some of their greatest fears and re-purpose systems and ways of working quite literally overnight.
Within this news cycle, some schools have attempted to control the narrative on school fees with cost-focussed stories and pleas for understanding.
Several schools have presented pre-COVID-19 costs in order to justify current COVID-19 online learning provision.
Schools have also been compared to restaurants among other things.
We’ve seen complete outrage from parents at the prospect of being charged “full fees” for term 3 whilst children remain at home. Unsurprisingly, over 25,000 parents signed online petitions to voice anger at their schools.
Parents have grappled with logins, platforms and resources, in what could only be defined as crisis education.
In the race to announce first, some schools have offered discounts…and the media have bitten on the headlines and press releases, without doing their due diligence, whilst the parents have digested the small print…
Several schools offered immediate, and substantial discounts for term 3, recognising the issues, whilst reducing operational costs, including salaries of teachers.
And, unfortunately, we’ve also seen teacher redundancies.
Throughout this period, very few industry leaders have spoken about the need for quality to be in-line with cost.
Very few have spoken about the need to regulate the quality of online learning in order to give parents comfort in the fees they have paid.
Whilst some would argue that online regulations are un-necessary, the benefits of regulating online learning are vast, and the UAE has the opportunity to lead on this. In summary they:
• Offer schools the opportunity to demonstrate their capability in online learning and allow schools to receive recognition for the quality programmes offered to students
• Provide clarity on the value of the fees parents are being charged for term 3 and potentially the future if the outcomes are published.
• Enable schools to re-organise their businesses and focus their resources
• Give students the confidence that the school has been evaluated and they are judged on rigorous standards
• Promote accountability to other schools and various stakeholders.
• Support and encourage innovation by emphasizing continuous improvement
How will schools be classified in a post-COVID-19 online world?
Historically schools have been classified by their price point (premium plus, premium, mid-market, low-fee) within the education business community, and these classifications are underpinned by assumptions about salaries, physical space, the curriculum, the facilities, capital repayment costs, land costs, legal structure, and in some cases, school brand association.
Virtual Schooling, which isn’t a new phenomenon in other parts of the world is largely about access to education, not exclusivity, and flexibility of learning at any time.
No-one doubts the efforts that teachers have made in switching to online learning in a short space of time but unfortunately, in a private education sector, the needs of parents supersede all others. The crisis has highlighted that without healthy, and financially liquid parents, a private sector without any state support is very much at risk unless it can adapt very quickly.
The newly published online learning regulations provide schools and parents with a measuring stick of quality.
When the term 3 school fee battle took place, the regulators encouraged compromise, and the problem has largely subsided. Whilst some parents have swallowed their pride, and some schools have done right by their community, the potential September 2020 showdown will not be played out in the same way, in my opinion.
If distance learning continues from September 2020, parents may demand that the quality of their school’s online learning is published and it is aligned with the fees they are being charged.
Without any track and field facilities, planetariums, STEM labs, auditoriums, and other facilities, as well as ancillary costs, parents will quite rightly question the value.
One of the most common questions posted in Dubai’s numerous parent forums over the past month is “How can this learning only be 10% less than what I normally pay?”.
The obvious answer, of course, is that schools have fixed costs etc, and the changes happened overnight, with huge uncertainty, and operational costs committed for the next 4/5 months.
The hidden story amongst this particular thread is that a number of schools have a significant amount of bad debt from un-paid fees from terms 1 and 2, and this crisis has compounded an existing problem that parents, businesses, and others have grappled with –liquidity.
Pre-COVID-19 Economic Factors
It’s no secret that before the crisis, the wider market was undergoing some turbulence. The Emirates National Bank Purchasing Manager’s Index (PMI) is often the barometer of how things are going in the UAE. It measures the performance of companies in the non-oil sector and is derived from a survey of 400 companies, including manufacturing, services, construction and retail. It is based on five individual indexes with the following weights: New Orders (30 percent), Output (25 percent), Employment (20 percent),Suppliers’ Delivery Times (15 percent) and Stock of Items Purchased (10 percent). A reading above 50 indicates growth of the non-oil private sector compared to the previous month; below 50 represents a contraction; while 50 indicates no change.
2019 offered glimmers of hope in amongst some common trends. The December 2019 PMI report highlighted that “For the year as a whole, the average PMI reading was 54.1” which still represents economic growth but it suggested a slower rate of non-oil sector growth in the last two years.
The employment index signalled that there was “no job growth in the UAE’s private sector on average last year” and selling prices declined because of price discounting in the market.
Business sentiment improved towards the end of the year due to increased investment towards Expo 2020.
Overall, slower growth and price discounting dominated 2019, and as a consequence, limited overall job creation took place in the private sector.
For residents within Dubai, this isn’t necessarily news, as social media groups were vocal and supportive of people responding to the economic climate.
Before the COVID-19 crisis, residential rental and property prices continued to fall…
Property Finder data indicates that around 39,000 residential units were delivered in 2019, compared to 33,881 units delivered in 2018 and property prices slid to a 7 year low with the average square foot hitting the AED 995 mark.
So with all of these challenges pre-crisis, it doesn’t take an economist to predict the direction of property prices in the short to medium term and the challenges that the global economy is facing.
A brighter post-COVID-19 future?
So at a time when liquidity is an even greater challenge, we enter a phase where the cost of education, theoretically comes down to the benefit of parents.
Of course, the majority of people are optimistic about a return to some level of normality, and certain countries have already started to plan for the re-opening of schools.
If anything, the crisis has enabled parents to see the true values that underpin the leaders and teachers of their schools.
Traditional loyalties have been tested and they will be tested again.
Teachers, on the whole, have gained greater value in the minds of the general public.
Business leaders and school owners are perhaps a mixed bag.
For regulators, a new landscape has been created with new tools and templates to adapt and deploy.
It’s fun, and scary to consider the implications of a world of only online schooling.
If virtual schooling continues beyond September 2020, the entire eco-system of private education within Dubai would have some serious questions to consider:
- What is the relationship between quality and price?
- What are the most appropriate ways to classify schools?
- What kind of cognitive experience will the children get over a sustained period of time?
- What will the unique selling points of each school be, if everyone is online?
- In what ways will schools maximise their admissions without any physical barriers to enrollment?
- What cultural factors will determine the pedagogical features of online teachers in different systems, and how will these be regulated?
- What will the contents of initial teacher training programmes look like? How will they be delivered?
- What will the future of special education needs look like?
- Will the government finally recognise the value of online education in all of its forms, and therefore, remove the current restrictions for students and teachers?
The announcement of the new online regulations is symbolic of the UAE’s desire to move forward and to lead on initiatives where others are not. This crisis might be a blip in the education sector’s history that we look back on with mixed memories, or we may see this as the catalyst for even greater change in the future that truly re-shapes our communities and the way we view schooling.
