The largest private school operator in the UAE has hired almost 2,000 teachers from 57 nationalities as part of back to school preparations.
This was revealed by Dino Varkey, the group chief executive officer of Gems Education. “We have hired 1,850 new teaching recruits,” he said at a media roundtable held in Dubai on Tuesday. “This is slightly less than the number of teachers we hired last year because we have done a good job of retaining our staff.”
His comments came on the sidelines of the annual Gems Awareness Day that welcomes new teachers into the group. According to him, most of the new teachers were British nationals, followed by educators from India and Egypt.
Stay up to date with the latest news. Follow KT on WhatsApp Channels.
The group will also open two new schools for students, apart from adding new seats to several of its schools to meet the increasing demand. “We have a branch of Gems Founders opening in Abu Dhabi’s Masdar City as well as one in Dubai South,” said Varkey. “The Founders model has been extremely successful and we have seen a lot of demand for it.”
Speaking to Khaleej Times, he further elaborated that there are several reasons why the school is successful. “The fees is about $8,000 (approximately Dh30,000) a year,” he said. “Its affordability has played a role, and it is a niche that allows a lot of families to subscribe to it. It is a school that has been able to find its market in the last seven years. It just went up in rating to ‘Very Good’ as well.”
The new schools will increase the number of institutions Gems operates in the UAE to 44. According to officials, the plan to begin a school in Dubai South was in response to the increasing demand. “We have a lot of demand from that community,” Dr Saima Rana, deputy CEO of Gems Education. “On the open days over the last weekend we had thousands of parents flocking to the school.”
Gems Founders Dubai South will start with 500 students and is expected to eventually cater to over 4,000 students. The school in Mizhar, however, will begin with 1,000 students and will expand to more than double its initial offering.
Expansion plans
One of the schools that will offer additional places for this academic year is Gems World Academy, which has opened a new building for its senior school. “The new site is very close to the existing building,” said Dr Rana. “It will look after Grades 9 through Grade 12. This will add an additional 1,200 seats to the school. Last year, we had a huge waiting list of students and we could see that there was a demand. That is why we decided to add more places to meet this demand.”
Additional seats have been added across several other Gems schools, increasing the total number of capacity in the group’s schools to 4,200. The group is expected to have over 140,000 enrolments by the beginning of the new academic term next week.
‘Back where I started’
For some of the new teachers, it was their first experience in Dubai while for others, it was like coming home. Mathematics teacher Martin Green arrived in Dubai last week to take up his position as head of department at Gems Cambridge International Private school in Sharjah. “It is my first time working in the UAE and I am really excited to be here,” he said. “I have been working for the last eight years in the UK and I am excited to bring my expertise here.”
Meanwhile, for Jordanian teacher Rana, it was like coming back home. An alumni of the Gems Cambridge International School Dubai, she grew up in the UAE before relocating to Jordan after graduating from school. “Fourteen years later I am back where I started,” said the English teacher. “It is interesting to enjoy the experience of a teacher here. I will be teaching students in Grades 9 up till Grade 12. I am so excited to interact with these teenagers during such an important time of their life and I hope to learn from them as much as they learn from me.”
Varkey also revealed that over the last 12 months, the group had a whopping 600,000 applicants. “Of these, we hired 2,000 teachers in the last year,” he said. “That means just 0.3 per cent of the applicants were successful.”
According to him, apart from their core knowledge of subjects, it was their love for children and spreading knowledge that made teachers successful in their applications.