The UAE is in the vanguard of smart education and it could not have been more important than during the coronavirus pandemic. The coronavirus has completely upended the whole educational pattern, particularly where attending schools and colleges are concerned. The practice of students attending school, interacting with their teachers and classmates, having fun in the playground, for instance, is no more normal. The new normal is online learning. Smart education is the order of the day.

However, the coronavirus outbreak is not going to break the chain of education — the UAE is keen to ensure the continuity of education in the country. Educational sustainability is key to development.

The UAE was one of the first countries to adopt smart learning, as it is included in its future strategy. The Ministry of Education, upon the directives of the country’s leadership, adopted smart learning tools in 2012 and drafted plans to ensure they were successfully used in classrooms.

While participating in a meeting of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation, Unesco, to discuss the return to schools in Arab countries during the COVID-19 pandemic, Jameela Al Muheiri, Minister of State for Public Education, said smart education was implemented on a large scale in the UAE in 2017 and 2018, and in 2019 it was fully adopted. “Due to the pandemic’s effects on everyone’s lives around the world, the country is relying on smart education in 2020,” she added.

The ministry, in cooperation with its partners from various sectors, is providing smart education tools to all students around the country, Al Muheiri pointed out, affirming that laptop computers and the internet were supplied to students and teachers.

“The ministry is offering 13 educational platforms on its smart education portal, and has trained 25,000 teachers in the public sector to use smart education tools, along with nearly 9,200 school principals and teachers from private schools. A specialist training course on remote learning was also held, in cooperation with the Hamdan Bin Mohammed Smart University, for some 67,000 people.

The ministry has developed a framework to assess remote learning systems. It has established flexible frameworks that can adopt to changes caused by the pandemic, it has also released a procedures manual for the resumption of the academic year, adopted a range of measures to ensure the health and safety of students and teachers, and provided teachers with e-learning resources.

The UAE has been a forerunner in embracing an effective smart education model that’s catered for the needs of around 1.2 million students without significant impediments.

Hussain Bin Ibrahim Al Hammadi, Minister of Education, said recently,

“Providing an effective learning system in the post-COVID-19 era is contingent on our ability to address the challenges that surfaced over the past period. In the meantime, we have to build on the gains we have made at various levels in order to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all without favouring a segment at the expense of others,” he added.

He highlighted four factors as main enablers for addressing the besetting challenges, namely advanced technological infrastructure; effective policies and regulations; more flexible and enriched curriculums; and effective training and rehabilitation.

“The educational outputs should be measured according to a set of fundamentals, namely establishing a holistic monitoring and evaluation system supported by considerable investments and effective partnerships through continual exchanges of expertise and knowledge transfer, he added.