UAE: How schools must help students 'unlearn' old teaching systems, become future-ready

Khaleej Times

20-05-2025

UAE-based students are gaining access to world-class education, with premium Indian educational institutes setting up in the UAE. Satish Kumar Sivan, Consul General of India to Dubai, highlighted the recent opening of Indian institutes like IIT Delhi-Abu Dhabi campus and plans to start other Indian universities like Indian Institutes of Management and Indian Institute of Foreign Trade in Dubai.
'They are getting access to quality Indian technological education,' he said. 'This opens opportunities and avenues to not just the Indian diaspora but Emirati as well as global students who can take advantage of these educational institutes.'
He was speaking at the Future of Learning: Innovation, Technology & Entrepreneurship event held on Tuesday, which focuses on strengthening the bilateral relationship between UAE and India.
Hosted by global startup ecosystem Talrop, in partnership with Khaleej Times, the event brought together key policymakers, educators, startup leaders, and investors to discuss a future-ready ecosystem that bridges creativity, learning, talent, and entrepreneurship.
A top entrepreneur pointed out that in modern times, teaching a student to fish isn't enough. Instead, they must learn to own the ocean. Siddharth Balachandran, Executive Chairman of Buimerc Corporation, explained how important it was to evolve traditional education models into future-proof systems that prepare students to not just survive, but to lead.
'You teach the man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime, is the old concept,' he said. 'The new concept, is that the fisherman goes on to understand the depth of the ocean and finds out where the fish are spawned. He also finds out that on the shore, you can actually build a factory; he markets to the entire world, trains the men on the shore and finally he creates a company, lists it on the stock exchange and becomes a trillionaire overnight.'
He also said that every education system should have an incubation system. 'This system would help students to get a simulation, and a reasonable understanding of the real world,' he explained. 'Because I think that the gap is not in skills; it is in the understanding of what is to come. So the incubation centre actually propagates idea formulation and helps the student in setting up firms.'
During the event, spokespersons for Talrop highlighted how their work has been empowering students across their home base in India where the company has been building ecosystems to scale.
Evolving education systems
Sivan also explained how India is constantly evolving its education system to meet the needs of the future. He explained that the country is investing 5 per cent of its GDP in education and its focus was to have a 'population that is skilled, adept and educated' to meet the challenges of the future.
'India's new education policy moves away from memorisation, which has been a challenge for education systems around the world, to testing the understanding of students,' he said. He explained how India's new education policy is focusing on three pillars – emphasising on play by learning at the pre-school level, supporting holistic learning by offering flexibility of subject choices to students, and focusing on skilling learners with vocational education.
He also highlighted how the partnership between India and UAE has been growing in the recent past.
Urgent conversation
Ted Kemp, Chief Content Officer at Khaleej Times, termed the event as a conversation 'that could not be more urgent'. He highlighted how the world was developing at a break-neck speed.
'A child born today will enter the labor force around 2045,' he explained. 'Yet, many of the systems we have in place to prepare them for the world that will challenge them are rooted in methods and models designed over a century ago.'
He said it was important to have global collaboration with local impact. 'The real bridge that we need to build is between imagination and implementation,' he said. 'We are no longer asking what we want our students to learn. We are asking how we can help them to adapt, unlearn, and imagine the world that they will inherit.'