The International Schools Review Forum

The UAE is moving the weekend from Thursday-Friday to a 2.5 day weekend of Friday afternoon + Sat-Sun. News has came out that private schools will follow this change too.

Will be interesting to follow how the different schools adapt to this change that is coming into place Jan 1. Anybody with boots on the ground in the UAE have more info?

Suspect this will fall into two camps.

One group will look at how schools manage this in other countries - in the UK for example, there are schools which do a 4.5 day week as it can make savings on cover costs, etc - so that students have the same level of contact time over 4.5 days as 5.

The other group will look to do things like cut salaries by 0.5 days, make teachers work longer days in the 4.5 to compensate for the loss of 0.5, and make students work longer too.

I don't work there, but for the people that do, I hope they figure out how to adapt to the 4.5 days without extending the teaching hours. We have the same work week in my country and just do a weekly A/B schedule to take care of the half day. It's not perfect, but it's much better than having to work an extra hour a day.

My bet, with mandated IB hours at DP, that they extend the school day. Given that you are losing some 70 days of instruction over 2 years, that is a huge chunk of time. And, given that it doesn't make sense to run buses for ES and MS but not HS, that will impact the other levels as well.

I concur with @SJ, my coin is that they extend the instructional day.