Kenneth Vedra, Director General, Emirates National Schools (ENS) • Interview
Despite the challenges in distance education, ENS has been hard at work doing what needs to be done to provide a solid educational program for children and meet their needs.
What were the immediate steps taken by ENS in response to the COVID-19 pandemic?
We have been working on an e-learning program for a number of years. At the end of February 2020, people were talking about getting ready for distance learning. Fortunately, we already had pieces in place that were working for us. One of the most important pieces, which we implemented two years ago, was Microsoft Office 365 accounts for all of our staff and K-12 students. We also worked with international computer driving licenses (ICDLs), which became a requirement in 2020. In January 2020, a little over 50% of our staff had licenses, and by the end of this school year, all of our teaching staff need to have ICDL authorizations. We went a step further to get e-learning coordinators who could work with our teachers who teach K-12 on all campuses. Despite being rather ahead of the curve, the pandemic still changed our landscape considerably. We had been working on a customized learning management system (LMS). Without sufficient time to implement the highly customized solution before the onset of the pandemic, we found workarounds through Seesaw, Edmodo, and other programs that could fit within our powerful student information system. However, technology’s toll on younger students is also a critical issue. To mitigate this problem, there is support necessary for their emotional wellbeing. A second challenging area has been student assessment. We ran our own evaluation of all our programs on all five campuses that included a quality assessment on 78 different indicators available internationally, and within three weeks the Ministry of Education did the same.
How has your collaboration with the government been over the past few months?
It has been great. One of our deputy superintendents works directly with the Ministry of Education and Abu Dhabi Investment Council (ADIC). The University of Maine’s Schools of Policy and International Affairs has been forthright in working with the ministry, as has ADIC. We received a great deal of good advice from these organizations on how to organize our work. The ministry came out with a three-step program to assess how effective we have been and what we need to do differently. They are thinking to the future and about making e-learning and distance learning viable for parents. When students miss school or when parents pull their children out, how do we keep kids up to speed in their education? We have come up with a number of different ways to make sure they are not left behind and have been working with the Ministry of Education in this regard.
What is your prediction for the education sector as we all adapt to a new reality and new world?
The use of electronic tools, an electronic curriculum, and virtual labs for the sciences needs to be enhanced and made more widely available. We will learn how to use these tools to assist kids in learning when they are ill or unable to attend school for whatever reason. We will create podcasts or make lessons available to them on the cloud so they can have access. Another piece we will learn is that as adults, we will understand better how to cope with change. A positive effect from this whole situation is realizing how fully patient and understanding my staff has been. They have been following the guidelines to make sure people stay safe and are great role models. We have had challenges, but people have been organized and are willing to do what needs to be done to provide a solid program for children and meet their needs. We have also become better at communicating and are trying new things. In the future, if we do get back to some semblance of what education used to be, there will still be opportunities for us to use these skills and things we have learned to move into a different realm and help people.