This will mark the end of more than a month of online learning for many students
Parents in the UAE are receiving emails with surveys on returning to school for in-person learning. The move comes just hours after the Ministry of Education (MoE) announced that UAE will begin a return their classrooms starting Monday, April 20.
In one such email seen by Khaleej Times, a school’s management wrote that the Knowledge and Human Development Authority have informed them that they “are able to open for face-to-face learning, subject to their approval, on Monday, April 20”.
Some institutes have informed parents that they will start in-person learning from next week. One school group took to social media to say that their Dubai branch will begin face-to-face learning on April 22, while their Sharjah branch will have students on campus starting April 20.
Meanwhile, some Dubai schools wrote to parents that they would continue to teach children online until further notice. According to these notices, all schools have to pass a rigorous inspection process by the Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA) to be approved to open.
One school wrote that this process “may take a few days”, while another one noted that “a comprehensive reopening plan” will be shared with parents once the approvals were in place.
For Mohammed Iqbal, father of two kids in a secondary school, the decision was very easy. “Our school send out a survey on whether we wanted to continue online learning or return to school, and I chose the option to send my children back to the classroom straight away,” he said.
“The conditions in the country are safe, and my children are really missing the human touch as well as the discipline of the daily school. So I chose to send them back.”
This will mark the end of more than a month of online learning for many students. School principals in Dubai had earlier said that they had been gauging the willingness of parents to send children back to school and that the responses had been largely positive.
Mother Nahed Khan, whose children attend a British syllabus school in Dubai, received a survey email late last evening. “We were given the option to select a date starting from April 20 to May 7 for return to in-person school, and I picked May 7,” she said.
“My children thrive better with online schooling so I would like to keep them with me longer. Also, I’m dreading the lunchbox-packing, school uniform-ironing schedule.”
Meanwhile, many parents of students attending public schools received news from their schools that in-person classes will begin on Monday, April 20. Mother of three, Umm Ahmed, said that she received the email on Thursday morning. “It informed us that in-person classes will begin on Monday and online schooling will be discontinued,” she said.
© Khaleej Times
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