How the UAE is compressing a century of institutional learning
For much of modern educational history, the world’s most admired schools appeared to embody a simple truth: enduring quality took time. The UK’s Eton College had nearly six centuries to become Eton, and Phillips Exeter Academy had more than two centuries to become Exeter; their reputations were built not in a single act of founding but through decisions made and remade over generations. I came to…
The UAE is challenging the notion that institutional maturity is solely dependent on age. While traditional schools like Eton College and Phillips Exeter Academy took centuries to build their reputations through accumulated experiences, younger institutions in the UAE are showing that fast-tracking this process is possible. Dubai, for instance, now has over 230 private schools across 17 curricula, with 81% of students attending "Good" or better-rated schools in the 2023-24 inspection cycle.
The success of these schools can be attributed to a fast-feedback architecture, where leaders bring lessons learned from other education systems, allowing the UAE to observe and adopt successful practices quickly. By inheriting experience, young institutions can avoid trial and error and build a habit of learning from their mistakes.
This approach can compress years of trial and error into a fraction of the time, leading to the development of characteristics typically associated with older institutions. This shift in perspective on institutional maturity has significant implications for governments investing in long-term institutions like universities, research centers, and cultural organizations, as well as investors in physical and social infrastructure.
The experiment in the UAE demonstrates that one of the greatest advantages nations have in building successful institutions may not be the capital they deploy but their ability to learn and adapt quickly.
Written by urgent.news from Gulf News's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
