There’s no getting out of Arabic lessons in the UAE. The education ministry is requiring its private kindergartens to teach a 40-minute daily lesson in the language at the start of the next school year, as well as Islamic studies classes for Muslim kindergarteners.
The initiative aims to encourage “a generation that is proud of its national identity, proficient in its mother tongue, and well-grounded in the values of family, society, and the geography and environment of the UAE,” the ministry said.
The emphasis on Arabic is part of a broad effort to get Emirati studies into schools, in a country where expats outnumber locals nearly nine to one. In 2023, Abu Dhabi’s private education regulator introduced the National Identity Mark, a rating system to measure educators’ efforts to integrate local culture into lesson plans.