EXPERTS CALL FOR LIFE SKILLS LESSONS IN SCHOOLS
▶ Pupils are good at maths but don’t know cooking or personal finance
Schools across the Mena region must do more to teach pupils core life skills such as personal finances and cooking, experts said.
Alberto Biancoli, from the UN International Children’s Emergency Fund, said curriculums should be expanded beyond traditional subjects such as maths and science to include lessons in skills that prepare pupils for life.
“If you look at the region, we are not preparing children in life skills,” he said.
Mr Biancoli spoke at an education conference held in Sharjah in October last year called Investing in the Future.
More schools are moving away from traditional textbook learning to teach a wider variety of life subjects.
Some schools in Dubai are using virtual money and investment portfolios to teach pupils personal finance. And at a school in Kentucky, in the US, pupils are taught how to cook, change car tyres and do their taxes.
“It’s really about focusing on the core life skills and finding a new way to build it up,” Mr Biancoli said.
“We have to rethink the role of education.”
He acknowledged there were significant regional disparities in how this problem was being addressed.
Mr Biancoli said schools in the UAE worked hard to promote the importance of developing softer skills, but said other countries that lacked similar resources were lagging behind.
“If you look at it country by country, then it varies tremendously,” he said. “You can’t fairly compare the UAE with many countries in the region. It’s unique.
“It has resources that others don’t and offers good quality education.”
Brendan Law, vice president of education at schools operator Gems, said he was well aware of the need for a holistic approach to education.
Mr Law emphasised that academic performance should not be the only criterion against which pupils were measured, and said broader life skills were also crucial.
“All of our schools have lifeskills programmes and pupils get access to work experience and paid internships,” he said. “My vision as an educator is for a holistic education.
“Children need skills outside the classroom just as much as they need the academic courses and results within the classroom. I know there are schools across the UAE sharing a similar vision. It’s an absolute target to develop beyond academic performance.”
In a 2016 study called the Skills Gap in the Middle East and North Africa, conducted by Bayt.com and YouGov, researchers found prospective employers said soft skills were often underdeveloped in jobseekers.
Jeff Evans, director of UAE’s Learning Key Education Consultancy, agreed this continued to be an area requiring improvement.
Mr Evans said more work needed to be done to encourage schools across the Emirates to broaden their curriculums.
“Many curriculums don’t cover basic skills like cooking, gardening or how to change a tyre,” he said. “It’s up to the school. Even now, many schools are exam-based and memory driven. Schools should build in all these skills.
“The gap is that they are relying on in-school talent for teachers to be able to take on all those initiatives and this varies from school to school. It’s important that schools recognise the gaps and plan.
“Employers are far less interested in memory than they are in things like emotional intelligence now.”