UAE to substitute exams with skills-based assessments for some students

 

Some students who attend schools in the UAE will no longer have exams as they will be made to take skills-based tests, authorities said on Tuesday.

Project performance has replaced written tests for measuring the competency of 5-8 grades of public schools in the second term this school year.

The announcement was made by Sarah Al Amiri, Minister of State for Public Education and Advanced Technology.

“This evaluation“, she said, “concerns the improvement of students’ skills and allows them apply what is learned in theoretical classes into practice which makes the learning process even more effective”.

She said that the transition in the evaluation process is incremental more of a cultural process and not a revolution.

‘The final [written] exam often gives a false impression of a student’s grasp of the subject.’ Mr Al Amiri spoke to this assertion, saying: “Any alteration within the process of education as proposed and recommended has to be done in moderation so as to address the need of the students and fit into the process of making a constructive provision towards the educational system.”

Not yet announced is the method of assessing the student projects and also their use.

In the same year, the ministry also slashed the passing rate from 70 to 60 percent besides partial changes to the students’ assessments, Al Amiri observed.

The ministry also disclosed that twenty-five schools are to open within the year; twelve of them are new while thirteen were closed for overhauling and are now reopening. New buses have also been introduced to the system beyond the 5000 before the start of the academic year.

Universities and schools are already making preparations for students to come back as they provide welcome-back kits and design new parent orientation websites.

To reduce the traffic flow to the school on the first day, most schools have arranged to open at different times with some other schools in their neighborhood.

Parents are now buying new supplies or else going in for secondhand items in a bid to control their expenditures.

Indeed, some UAE parents are said to have spent as much as Dh2000 per child on back-to-school items.

In their response, UAE officials estimated that about 20,000 students will be transferred from private to public schools in 2023. Authorities stated that over 280,000 learners will be and to will be coming back to government schools on August 26 this year.