Abu Dhabi needs 100 new schools in 8 years
Investment for 100 educational facilities must come from the private sector.
Abu Dhabi needs to build 100 new schools in the next eight years or it will face acute shortages in seats for pupils from low and middle-income earning families. The investment needed for building more educational facilities must come from the private sector, according to the forecast.
Hamad Al Daheri, executive director for private schools and quality assurance at the Abu Dhabi Education Council (Aadec) says he plans to offer an extra 146,000 seats in the coming years to fill educational needs, expected to double by 2020.
Currently, Abu Dhabi has 185 private school offering education for more than 198,000 pupils or 60 percent of schoolchildren in the emirate. Some of these schools are functioning over capacity. There is a need to build schools to take an additional 15,000 pupils annually to cater to growth in demand.
“We need to ensure that enough private schools are set up, and that they all adhere to Adec quality standards,” Al Daheri said. At present 75% of all current schools don’t meet Adec’s minimum standards.
