GEMS Education’s Amanda Spielman Highlights Strengths and Challenges in UAE’s Education Sector

GEMS Education has appointed Amanda Spielman the former Chief Inspector of Ofsted as the Chair of the newly formed Academic council. New to the council, Spielman will supervise the formats’ adherence that the GEMS schools employ in curriculum, assessment, technology, inclusion and student welfare.

Spielman, who has been in charge of Ofsted since 2017 and will serve until 2023, said she was looking forward to the opportunity to work at GEMS, which is expanding in a country that is experiencing rapid growth, which has a highly developed private education system. She stressed that being part of GEMS, this company has evidenced high sensitivity to educational outcomes and has been serving as a model of educational improvements that made the choice to participate in this project quite an easy one.

But he went on to identify some key challenges, more especially with the ‘COVID-19 backlog’ that has affected learning across the globe. Interesting, she noted that most students did not attend school and lost out on learning as well as socialization during the pandemic which remains a challenge to most institutions. Besides, she said that there were new standards added to the contemporary society such as social networking and globalization which actually increased the level of stress among students and parents.

As much as Spielman was aware of the possibilities in use of technology for the productive purposes in education, she holds the strong opinion that technology can never equal the natural human touch that is so crucial for the learning process. ‘They said that there is something deep and powerful if the young can have interactions to help them grow,’ she also stressed the significance of contact with students, teachers and relations in the physical school.

As the Chair, however, Spielman has the vision of helping GEMS schools to create positive education environment. As she highlighted the concept of education is a lifelong process that needs commitment, vision, and adaptability in the context of increasing learning needs to provide students quality learning in totality to meet future challenges.