UAE Ministry of Education introduces four-level grade review system for 2026-27 academic year

Dubai: The Ministry of Education has decided to subject student grades to a four-level system of review, auditing, control, and adjustment, starting with the teacher in the classroom, passing through the school principal and the district director, and reaching the Department of Tests and Evaluation for General Education. The decision has been made in order to unify evaluation standards, ensure the accuracy, fairness, and consistency of grades, and monitor and address any discrepancies in student performance assessments. In detail, the Ministry, through the Student Assessment Policy Guide for the academic year 2026-2027, identified four levels among which, the responsibility for ensuring the fairness and accuracy of the assessment is distributed. The responsibility falls on the teacher at the class level, on the school principal at the school level, on the district director at the district level, while the General Education Testing and Assessment Department assumes responsibility at the educational system level. This gradual approach reflects the transfer of responsibility for the quality of grades from the classroom level to broader levels, so that the process of verifying the accuracy of the assessment is not limited to the teacher or the school, but extends to the level of the educational system, which supports the consistency of the application of assessment standards across different levels. The policy emphasised that adjusting and modifying grades is a fundamental practice to ensure the quality of assessment, and schools, based on central guidelines, are committed to organising comprehensive audits covering all grades and subjects. The auditing process includes verifying teachers' adherence to standardised assessment criteria and correction mechanisms, ensuring that standards are applied consistently and that student performance is not assessed differently due to variations in correction methods or interpretation of standards. The procedures also include exchanging educational discussions among teachers, with the aim of reaching a common understanding of the assessment criteria, promoting consistency in their application, as well as comparing the correction results among teachers to verify fairness and consistency in awarding grades. The school administration organises periodic sessions to adjust and modify grades for this purpose, ensuring uniformity of standards within the school and enhancing credibility in awarding grades. These sessions provide a framework for reviewing assessment practices and discussing standards and correction mechanisms among teachers, which helps to reach more consistent and fair assessments when evaluating student work. The procedures for adjusting and modifying grades do not stop at the school level, as they extend to the district level to promote fairness and consistency of evaluation among schools within the same district. School operations teams are working to coordinate field visits to schools to verify the application of similar assessments in terms of quality, accuracy and fairness.