International Voices - Dr Ahmed Shaban

In this latest Think Education podcast, Prof Christopher Hill talks to Dr Ahmed Shaban about his work with the Sharjah Private Education Authority and discusses the recent initiative of a four day week in the private schooling system.

Dr Ahmed outlines the process involved in designing, developing and implementing the four-day week within the private education sector in Sharjah (an Emirate of the United Arab Emirates) and reflects on the initial stages of the implementation.

The discussion moved to impact and wellbeing and Dr Ahmed reported on the current findings and feedback received from key stakeholders, the mechanisms in place to fully support the changes, and some of the knock on effects of the change – such as reduced traffic and increased social activity.

I asked Dr Ahmed about the change in the schooling day and where the additional hours of learning ended up.  I was curious to learn how you are able to condense five days into four – and of course, you can’t, not completely.  The four days do become a little longer but the three weekend days are aimed at creating a balance – with considerable resources in place to support family activity, camps and wellbeing.

As the first such experiment of this nature in the Arab World, the Sharjah Four-Day Week is a fascinating initiative that seeks to better understand student learning, wellbeing and social interaction.  While this is still a work in progress – with an ongoing review process in place – there are already interesting findings (available in the report linked below) to mull over and reflect upon.

 

Four Working Days: An impact study on productivity and quality of life from the perspective of private education in Sharjah

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahmed-shaban-phd-697a1427/?originalSubdomain=ae

https://spea.shj.ae/

 

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