Fears over education’s gender gap

Kathryn Lewis

• Last Updated: November 06. 2009 12:10AM UAE / November 5. 2009 8:10PM GMT

Emirati boys are posting lower examination scores and dropping out of high school at a much greater rate than Emirati girls, newly released research shows.

It also found that among pupils who complete secondary schooling, many fewer boys go on to a university education.

“The Government needs to start thinking very hard about how they can improve the quality of boys’ schools and how they can engage boys in the education process,” the study’s author, Dr Natasha Ridge, a research fellow at the Dubai School of Government (DSG), said yesterday.

“The less educated youth you have, the less capacity you have as an economy. If you have a large percentage of undereducated boys, then they are not going to be able to contribute to the economy in a way that, say, someone who has completed high school or completed a degree can do.”

Dr Ridge, who has studied the country’s schools extensively, is regarded as one of the UAE’s foremost education experts. Her research, which focused on government schools in Ras al Khaimah, was originally submitted for her doctoral dissertation at Columbia University in New York.

The study shows that a troubling gap between the performance of boys and girls is growing. “If competitiveness is dependent on a well-educated populace, then the UAE is bound to be adversely affected by the small numbers of males undertaking tertiary studies,” Dr Ridge wrote.

She noted that the World Economic Forum’s Global Competitiveness Report ranked the UAE 41st out of 134 countries in terms of higher education and training in 2008-2009, “well below all innovation-driven economies”.

“There are lots of studies that link crime rates and unemployment rates with low education levels,” Dr Ridge said.

“What are these unemployed youth going to do, how will they spend their time? In the long term, they will be a burden on the state. Someone will have to provide for them, or they will be a cost to the state.”

The study found that although 70 per cent of Emirati girls enrol at university after high school, the figure for boys is only 27 per cent.

In 2007, only five per cent of high school-aged girls failed their final examinations. The rate among boys was twice as high.

Also that year, 14 per cent of Grade 10 boys dropped out of school in RAK, compared with only four per cent of girls.

The drop-out rates are highest in Grade 10, the first non-compulsory year of school, when many boys abandon their education to pursue jobs in the public sector.

Dr Ridge said the Government must target Grade 10 pupils to encourage them to stay in school.

Pointing to recent results in international benchmarking examinations, Dr Ridge noted that, in genPointing to recent results in international benchmarking examinations, Dr Ridge noted that, in general, public schools across the UAE were performing well below global standards.

“By no means does this study imply that girls have an outstanding quality of education either,” she said. “I would say that neither boys nor girls are receiving the best education that they could in government schools.”

The UAE is not alone in having such a gender gap, said Dr Ridge. But she stressed that more needed to be done to combat the problem.

“There is a global crisis in boys’ education,” Dr Ridge said. “In the US, in the UK there are huge problems with boys’ underachievement.”

Dr Ridge said Britain and Australia had set up task forces to address the issue.

There were three main reasons for the gender gap, she said.

Firstly, boys’ schools are not as good as girls’ schools.

Secondly, the incentives for boys to pursue higher education are limited, because many attractive and well-paying jobs are available to boys without degrees.

Finally, families often depend on their sons to be breadwinners, and encourage young men to go out to work at the earliest possible age.

“Studies on school quality in the UAE have found boys’ schools to be lacking warmth, creativity and engagement, with teachers expecting little from students and giving back little in return,” Dr Ridge said in her study.

She noted that research had found that the relationship between Arab expatriate teachers and pupils in boys’ schools was “ambivalent at best and openly hostile at worst”.

Dr Ridge recommended that the Ministry of Education should look at improving the quality of its expatriate teaching force, getting more Emirati men to become teachers, and making schools more attractive to pupils.

“Boys’ schools are very bare, they are not very appealing,” she said. “I would also think about how to make the curriculum better suited to boys. There is very little PE. All the boys express interest in wanting to do more sport, physical education, and there is none of this. They also want to do more IT, but the IT curriculum is very limited.”

Dr Ridge’s report pointed to 2005 statistics from the National Admittance and Placement Office, which found that 33 per cent of males who did not go to university joined the Army or police force, while 30 per cent stayed home or were looking for work.

She concluded that boys would leave school if well-paying public sector jobs were open to them without a high school or university diploma.

The Armed Forces and police were a “very attractive” career choice for some because they required minimal education, Dr Ridge said.

“Especially for boys who are not doing very well at school, due to poor-quality teaching and a poor-quality environment, it’s an attractive option for them,” she said. “If you already don’t enjoy school and you see that you can make money and start earning an income then of course that’s going to be your natural choice.”

Emiratis make up only one per cent of the UAE’s private sector workforce. The public workforce is 85 per cent Emirati.

“This ratio may offer some explanation of the low enrolment and high dropout rates of Emirati men from school and university,” Dr Ridge concluded, adding that nationals went into the public sector because of high wages and better working conditions.

Safiya Ahmed, a retired school principal, agreed that more should be done to encourage youngsters to stay in school.

“If the public sector doesn’t hire and makes it harder for those with a poor education to find jobs and make money, the situation might improve,” Mrs Ahmed said.

Officials from the Ministry of Education could not be reached for comment yesterday.

klewis@thenational.ae