Kathryn Lewis

Last Updated: September 14. 2009 2:22PM UAE / September 14. 2009 10:22AM GMT

ABU DHABI // Private companies will have a hand in the management of every state high school in the emirate when the new term starts next week, as part of the Abu Dhabi Education Council’s effort to turn around failing schools.

The schools will become part of the public-private partnership programme, a pilot initiative now in its fourth year. A total of 147 schools – roughly half of all state schools, primary and high, in the emirate – will be participating in the programme this autumn. Last school year, 118 state schools participated.

The pilot programme pairs state schools with private education consultancies to introduce the education council’s reform agenda.

At primary schools, the partnerships were accompanied by the introduction of a new standards-based curriculum developed for the education council by the Department of Education in the Australian state of New South Wales, and by the introduction of maths and science taught in English.

Under the public-private partnerships, education management companies help to run existing state schools, which retain their own teachers and principals. At present, a handful of companies are involved in the programme. Among them are the American charter school company Mosaica; a wing of the UAE-based education giant Global Education Management Systems, commonly known as GEMS; and the British firm CfBT Education Trust. Taaleem, the UAE’s second largest private school operator, will join next year.

The expansion of the partnership programme to high schools will focus more on English instruction. Pupils in Abu Dhabi high schools will get an additional 90 minutes of English instruction per week.

On top of the new partnership with teachers working in Abu Dhabi high schools next year, the education council has recently hired 455 native speakers of English to teach at state schools.

The announcement that all state high schools will be part of the pilot programme was made on Thursday at a meeting of state school principals organised by the education council.

At the meeting, Dr Mugheer al Khaili, director general of the council, stressed that schools must co-operate with the ADEC to lift standards.

“The change in the education sector is necessary to achieve the goals of the economic vision of the emirate,” Dr al Khaili said.

He called on school principals to exercise the appropriate initiative and work with the education council to improve schools.

Moving all state high schools into the public-private partnership programme is not the only change planned for this autumn.

When the new year starts, the school day will be extended at state high schools, and students will take four additional periods of English instruction each week and two additional periods each of maths and Arabic-language instruction. School maintenance work has also been outsourced to a private company.klewis@thenational.ae

The WSJ reported that “The US government doled out $502 million for a dozen wind and solar energy projects.” The big winner was Iberdrola, a Spanish wind giant. Coming in second was Horizon, a subsidiary of a Portuguese firm. Third place went to a UK-owned firm. These grants will likely result in an energy efficient infrastructure, but two things strike me as interesting, 1) the big winners were all foreign owned, an indication of where public incentives have encouraged private investment over the last decade, and 2) all the grant recipients were for-profit companies, an opportunity that the US Department of Education doesn’t share with its $100 billion stimulus.

The education sector bias (and related legal prohibitions) against investment by private companies is remarkable in contrast to other public delivery systems. Innovations in health care, energy production and transmission, and transportation are often the product of private investment in government requested, sponsored, or incentivized projects. We don’t mind if textbook publishers update versions, but hackles go up when private operators propose school management. Most of this is just disguised job protection; the rest is historical bias.

Yesterday I visited Atlanta Preparatory Academy, a new school run by Mosaica, a private charter school operator. After only a month of access to an old school building, the place was updated, orderly, and clean. On day two of a new school, it was clear that a common instruction vision and curriculum framework were a guiding force. Classrooms were colorful and organized and featured products of the rich art and history curriculum. A talented principal (trained by New Leaders for New Schools) introduced me to an amazing teaching staff, some of whom had transferred from a Washington, D.C. Mosaica school. The instructional day was an hour longer than local schools, with 12 extra days of school each year.

You’d see the same at a National Heritage Academy, a privately operated network of 70 public charter schools. Mosaica and NHA are offering a service that is clearly superior to near by public schools and doing it for less money. They usually have to provide their own facility with no public funding. Yet they are prohibited from holding charters directly in most states. They find or construct a non-profit corporation which seeks a charter and then contracts with them for school management services. They run the risk of being kicked out of a school that they invested hundreds of thousands of dollars to open.

The $650 million Invest in Innovation Fund (i3) will soon be doled out primarily to school districts — folks with very little ability to invest in, manage, or scale innovation. Unlike the Department of Energy, public-private partnerships are prohibited. If the US Department of Education was able to invest half of i3 in private ventures, it would be multiplied several times over by private investment (10x in some cases), it would fund scalable enterprises with the potential for national impact, and the innovation would be sustained by a business model.

The barriers and prohibitions erected against for-profit companies in education weaken American competitiveness. Many of the interesting schools and learning tools are being developed internationally — all with private investment.

This isn’t a hypothetical argument for me. I spent the last year raising money, starting companies, and hiring staff (during the worst recession in 60 years). Worse than the recession are barriers to entry that inhibit the tools and schools that will mark the next generation of personalized learning.

We send our kids to privately run hospitals, we travel over privately constructed roads, and we buy power from private companies. Private sector investment and innovation should play a more important role in American education. Private companies have built-in incentives for speed, quality and scale. Visit Atlanta Prep or an NHA school if you want to see private capital providing a great service for less.

www.EdReformer.com