Last week we reported the decision by the Municipality of Abu Dhabi City to shut down six villa schools on health and safety grounds. While it’s obviously tough on the 2,291 students who will have to find places in new schools for next term – and their parents – we’re all for (sensible) health and safety rules.

Written by: Dennis Jarrett

There’s also a question mark over the use of residential premises as schools in the first place. Here’s part of a letter we received last week:

“We eagerly look forward to the disappearance of [a villa school] from our neighbourhood in Khalidiya ... The school yard is about the size of our combined living and dining rooms. That space could well be covered by a teacher´s voice. Nevertheless, the school employs a high-power sound system. Sitting in our living room some 150m away from the school, it is impossible to listen to the radio ... Repeated personal discussions with the headmaster have been totally fruitless. Escalating the issue to the Abu Dhabi Educational Zone also yielded nothing as the ADEZ interventions only achieved some relief during the day immediately following such intervention before the school returned to the bad habits of noise pollution ...”

We omitted the name of the school in question because we were unable to reach the headmaster to get the school’s viewpoint, but it seems clear that at the very least this villa school has proved to be a very poor neighbour.

That is the obvious and very real danger of allowing residential premises to be used as schools; there certainly seems to be a real need for more school places, and the villa route is clearly an economical option for someone who wants to set up a private school – there are 484 schools in the Emirate, 179 of them are private, and no fewer than 77 (shortly to be 71) operate from residential premises. There’s particular demand for alternatives to the Ministry of Education curriculum and, in particular, the high prices asked by the independent Western-curriculum schools.

While most of the villa schools seem able to handle their special situation, existing happily alongside family homes with give and take on both sides, it’s not an ideal solution. We simply need more schools, and maybe more creative ways of funding private school places.