Dubai GEMS Schools vs UK Private Schools Study
 

Some one please advise me how is GEMs Secondary School study compared to UK private schools.
Thanks

Re: Dubai GEMS Schools vs UK Private Schools Study
 

Short answer is it doesn't. Not even remotely!

Re: Dubai GEMS Schools vs UK Private Schools Study
 

I think the test should be against an average UK school.

The schools here so ok as the kids are from a good intake. Almost all parents have degrees, have money and have time to support the kids. Yet the schools churn out results similar to a good UK mixed intake comprehensive.

Don't confuse facilities with education. The schools here are staffed with young teachers going a job rather than crusty grumpy ones trying to make a career.

Of course - UK private schools also mean that your children are excluded from mixing with a demographic of people that make up most of the country.

I do love an education debate.

Re: Dubai GEMS Schools vs UK Private Schools Study
 

That's a good thing, isn't it?

Re: Dubai GEMS Schools vs UK Private Schools Study
 

some people think so.

Re: Dubai GEMS Schools vs UK Private Schools Study
 

:goodpost:

The other thing to bear in mind is that due to the relatively brief experience of most teachers here unless your child is smart out of the box and for some reason needs extra attention to get with the programme you are probably shit out of luck...

Some people will tell you that THEIR school is excellent, outstanding, blah, blah, blah. My opinion is that they are trying to justify the extortionate amounts they are spending on fees to themselves.

Re: Dubai GEMS Schools vs UK Private Schools Study
 

Basically what Millhouse says except the kids are generally above average all-rounders.

My Mrs teaches PE at a GEMS primary. She taught secondary in a state school in the UK. She reckons that 7/8yr olds here have the same ability levels as 13/14yr olds in UK.

Take that either way - PE here is well structured even at primary so by the time they get to secondary they'll be expected to be good at stuff. OR, kids in the UK are fat and retarded. Either or.

Academically, I don't know. I know some genuinely excellent teachers and I know some genuinely excellent pissheads, who happen to have beer sessions interrupted by teaching.

They're not bad, they're not great. It's sort of luck of which school you get in to.

Re: Dubai GEMS Schools vs UK Private Schools Study
 

Speaking of the private debate and the Brits in the UAE, in the UK the independent sector educates around 7% of the school age population, but I'd hazard a guess and estimate that at least a third, if not more, of British expats in the UAE were educated at either private or grammar schools.

Re: Dubai GEMS Schools vs UK Private Schools Study
 

I hit the triple crown, private, state, grammar.

Re: Dubai GEMS Schools vs UK Private Schools Study
 

Fair enough - hence my "good intake" argument. Kids in schools here are somewhat privileged yet their results are not overly different. There is a lack of competition in schools here - partly as a result of a comfortable life.

I recently made the decision between a UK comprehensive, and a UK private school. Both schools were nice and friendly, one had 30 kids in a class, the other 7. I still opted for the comprehensive as the smaller private school would mean that my child would only be socializing with the children of doctors and overly aspirational engineers. In life, which is what school is suppose to be preparing people for, he will have to deal with builders, people from under-privileged areas, people with different outlooks on life - I wanted to prepare him for that.

Of course, we still invest heavily in more formal education but what you learn in the playground is very important too. He can't go through life not knowing how to cook heroine on a spoon. :lol:

Re: Dubai GEMS Schools vs UK Private Schools Study
 

please don't breed.

Re: Dubai GEMS Schools vs UK Private Schools Study
 

In PE?! what are the kids eating here to reach that level of physical development.

I find it all of this very interesting - I've known many kids here who did well here to only find themselves very much mid-placed in the UK ... often with significant gaps.

Mini-millhouse was top in maths here - a position that he has held in the UK but that's mostly because I value it so highly and a lot of effort is done at home to push him and make it fun. I think the UK school has brought him on a lot more (due to competition with other kids) that what happened in Dubai.

Of course - let's not forget that the only education that really matters occurs pretty much in the later school and university (or post university) years.

Re: Dubai GEMS Schools vs UK Private Schools Study
 

I agree with all this. Not that I have kids or anything, but the idea is bang on. That being said, I went from private junior school to a local village comprehensive. That comp toughened me up a bit (as much as you can between 7-11) before going into Grammar where being tough kind of didn't matter at all.

I talk to mates about their normal state secondary schools, even the 'good' ones and the stories of scumbags getting up to no good non stop are plain horrific. I'm grateful I went to a grammar...it appears to be, on reflection, a nice balance between not being a complete toff **** and not being a complete peasant. You're surrounded by people who aren't complete idiots and could excel, but you're limited by normal state issues of shit facilities etc.

That's a bit unfair. Why not?

Re: Dubai GEMS Schools vs UK Private Schools Study
 

That's exactly the right balance in my opinion too - pity I failed the exams for the grammar - maybe then I wouldn't have been drinking Special K at a bus stop on a winter Friday night when I was 14. We'd have found somewhere warm. ;)

of course it is a bit like the "without war you cannot have peace" argument - without some shitter school to house the masses you can't have Grammars.

ah, it was a joke that I immediately regretted posting - it looked so much harsher in written form ;)

Re: Dubai GEMS Schools vs UK Private Schools Study
 

Everyone approaches the the private/state debate differently and for different reasons (let us reduce the pool to those who have a genuine choice between the two, which most people don't).

I've read several compelling studies showing that modern teenagers are disproportionately influenced not by parental factors but by their fellow students. This is especially the case for the secondary years where parents as role models decline greatly in influence to be replaced by the fellow students. These studies were arguing that parents as influential factors have declined over the years, not because the parents were opting out but because other societal factors were too much and had chipped away at the old parental authority.

It makes perfect sense to me. I was privately educated. Didn't think much of it at the time and it wasn't until afterwards when I heard too many stories from friends who'd gone to comps, even top comps, about what had gone on in their schools that it made me realise how genuinely lucky I was to have avoided so much of that shit. There's still plenty of naughty stuff that goes on among students at private schools but it seems the independent sector is very, very, very good at preventing it from getting out of hands and keeping most students on an academic track. Not perfect, of course.

Not being educated with a mixed intake hasn't hurt me in real life. Than again I didn't go to one of the really poncy boarding schools so it may be different in those environments.