Dubai University Senior Lecturer: "Grades Are Grades"

Abu Dhabi's newspaper, The National, is reporting that some high school students are experiencing great dificulty adapting to the new math curriculum. According to the paper, some have asked the Ministry of Education to change how their final grades are calculated to more accurately reflect the difficulty of new the tests.

Educators said the new exams, which move away from memorisation of facts and figures, were necessary to provide an accurate picture of student performance.
Commenting on requests to adjust grades, Dr. Clifton Chadwick, a senior lecturer in the faculty of education at the British University in Dubai said “grades are grades.”
The National reports that Dr. Chadwick’s sentiment is in line with the position taken by the Ministry of Education.

A recent Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study found that five times as many students in Dubai were taught by teachers who did not graduate in education than the international average.

Dubai’s TIMSS results, released in December, showed that pupils studying the national curriculum in state schools posted the lowest scores, lagging substantially behind their peers in private schools.
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