If recent reports are to be believed, the kids aren’t alright. Twelfth-grade students, across private and public UAE schools are finding the Ministry of Education’s (MoE) new curriculum too tough. The percentage of failures could be as high as 40 per cent and this has been attributed to struggling with a system that the students are not accustomed to. At a press conference yesterday, the Minister of Education Dr Hanif Hassan did not deny that a good number of 12th graders are struggling with the new curriculum. “The ministry has offered students strengthening courses to prepare them to think out of the box and accustom them to the new curriculum,” said the education minister. 
“It is only natural for students to struggle at this point in time. Anything new requires patience and effort, not only among students but among teachers, school principals and academics,” he added.
School grades alone do not determine an individual’s intelligence level, said the minister. “Students are not just tested on their examination grades. They are also required to undergo research, projects and are assessed on applied knowledge throughout the year,” he stressed. The Ministry is now taking steps towards offering a better education.
These include developing systems that enable parents to follow their children’s academic performance, providing infrastructure that relies on modern techniques throughout all educational levels, promoting human resource policies and regulations which will improve and develop quality performance in the educational system, developing and improving school buildings and utilities and promoting professional development programmes and systems for all educational staff such as administrators, teachers and technicians.
