The SchoolsCompared.com Interview. ‘Bob Dylan, The Future of Education and Not Trading Away Kindness for Cynicism.’ Dr Saima Rana On The Record.

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“Bob Dylan, Sunny Varkey, The Silver Bullet and A Blueprint for Hope”

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SchoolsCompared.com: What are the most important things you have learned over the last three years leading GEMS on how we can make education deliver for every single child? What can and must we do better?

Dr Saima Rana, CEO/Principal, GEMS World Academy; Chief Education Officer, GEMS Education; and, Chief Education Ambassador, The Varkey Foundation:

The role of leadership, of teacher expertise, motivation and expectations are always foundational. There cannot be excellent education without ensuring great leaders and great teachers are in all our schools. The development and expansion of the positive vision of hope, of inclusivity, of holistic (mind, heart, spirit and body) and personalised educational practices, of rigour in formal and informal education, the expansion of external networking, the expansion of opportunities for students, of accountability and tracking of everything and everyone in a positive and support culture of aspiration and innovation – these are the bedrock elements.

Placing values of care and responsibility for all – an ethical focus if you like – at the heart of all relationships both in and out of classrooms and all relationships in the school community – including parents and staff as well as students – these things all need to be continually refreshed and re-evaluated so we can do them better of course. Placing the child – every child – irrespective of background or ability – at the centre of the universe, as you put it a moment ago, is the crucial instinct that must drive what everyone does in our school communities. It’s from that very strikingly simple starting point that everything else needs to flow. It’s the mission and something we forget at our peril.  

SchoolsCompared.com: If we always do things the way they were done, then nothing will change. Looking around us, many would say what we need is far more change and far less staying the same. There is such a pressure in schools, as all parts of life, to conform to old ways of thinking…. Change is hard for people…. There are so many vested interests. But we must change if we are not to fail children…. What do you think? Where do we start?

Dr Saima Rana, CEO/Principal, GEMS World Academy; Chief Education Officer, GEMS Education; and, Chief Education Ambassador, The Varkey Foundation:

Again, as I’ve responded to some of your earlier assertions, I think we need to parse the assumptions carefully. Some ways of doing things are still being done the way they are because they’re good and they work. Some change is pointless and badly researched and fails. It’s never all or nothing. Schools have organic ecologies and many of the things we do well are best thought of as having been grown over a long time rather than engineered. I’m all about innovation and being positive about changes but I don’t think change is always a good thing, especially if we lose what is valuable in the process of those changes. When we were dealing with the tragedy of the global pandemic, schools had to fall back on virtual schooling to cope and this was a wonderful response. Dubai schools were rightly praised for how they coped – indeed Dubai generally was a model of how it managed the threat and is another reason why it is an attractive place to live in – but I resist calls for changing all schooling into virtual schooling, for example, as some people argue. Why? Not because I don’t like change or don’t like digital technologies. I love change and am a techno enthusiast. But I assess the situation differently and think there are many things about actual schools that are too valuable to lose by transferring to the virtual. So I think what we need to do with all proposals for change is to do the research, look hard at the situation – and don’t overlook the intangibles, those things that might elude the gung ho change merchants and the cost accountants. I think we are often dazzled by stories about the future that ignore the important and the valuable which can only be detected by a sort of wisdom, of experience and tradition. Of course, some traditions are harmful and block necessary and positive change, but I don’t buy the ideology that says all traditions are bogus. It’s why I heed religion and art – some things can’t be replaced by a better substitute in a linear way which the economists and technocrats promote – horse and cart replaced by cars and so forth. Some things work not in a linear way but in a way that circles round and enriches – the past speaks to the new and the new the old – think  about how a Beckett play speaks to a Shakespeare play and in turn the Shakespeare can speak forwards to Beckett – Beckett doesn’t replace Shakespeare but they share in a dynamic that enriches and deepens our understanding, and increases our capacity for wisdom and wonder. Too often schools get caught up in the language of techno-economic change and this equally important discourse is forgotten. But how can we be the people we want to be, and how can we say we are genuine about the value of a truly holistic education if we ignore the accumulated wisdom of our artists and ethical and religious and philosophical people?      

Dr Saima Rana on Dylan: “The Future is a lost chance that can be saved.”

SchoolsCompared.com: Draw me a picture of your school of the future? Will it ever happen?

Dr Saima Rana, CEO/Principal, GEMS World Academy; Chief Education Officer, GEMS Education; and, Chief Education Ambassador, The Varkey Foundation:

Bob Dylan said that the crucifixion happened last Tuesday and JG Ballard said that the future ended in the 1950’s. The point is that the future isn’t a date or a time but a state of mind, a dream and a lost chance that can be saved. So, I say the future can be seen right here in our current best schools. And it can freeze and go away if we don’t make every school good enough to place the child at the centre of the universe every day for ever. Come to my school, come to the many wonderful GEMS schools and I think you’ll see that school of the future right there. Every child engaged and thriving, expanding their minds, their hearts, developing their spirits and their bodies so that they are unafraid of the future and empowered to make life choices that will make them powerful, engaged, fulfilled, caring, ethical, brave, humorous, global citizens.  

SchoolsCompared.com: Someone wrote in the Telegraph recently that they would not bring children into this world because there is no hope left? Are they wrong? Do subjects like Music, Arts, The Performing Arts give us hope….

Dr Saima Rana, CEO/Principal, GEMS World Academy; Chief Education Officer, GEMS Education; and, Chief Education Ambassador, The Varkey Foundation:

In the second half of the 19^th century Schopenhauer was the most famous philosopher in the world and he said exactly that. Life is terrible. We’d all be better had we not been born. Nietzsche answered back. Life may be terrible but the thing that makes any life terrible isn’t that bad things happen but that they are meaningless. His answer was to forge meaning. Make the world meaningful, give it a purpose – find its purpose or make a purpose – and then the appropriate response is to laugh and say YES to life. To me the whole project of great schools and education is to ensure we can all face the world with that laughter and that optimism. An education that creates meaning for all is one that finds hope for all. Placing the child at the centre of the universe is the way we do this. Of course, the arts create meaning – but so does anything we do that inspires hope and confidence and desire for tomorrow and the future. Tragedy and heartbreak are part of life – these are unavoidable and go to the depths of our being – all the more reason to read Beckett, Shakespeare, Dylan, Ballard, Kafka as well as study the sciences, master the technologies, the languages, ponder the historians, play the sports, develop hobbies, fall in love, build a charity for the helpless children, oppose wars, fight oppression and poverty, cherish your friends and families, travel to new places, have a feast, have a ball, tell a joke, take a risk just because you want to. Once you have the education you have the capacity to choose the life you want and with that capacity comes the meaningfulness that scorns the pessimists. At the end of Lars von Triers film which depicts literally the end of earth he shows a woman taking a child out into a field to play. The world is ending but what the woman and child do is not despair but play, because no matter the impending disasters the capacity to find the right spirit, to know you’re meaningful no matter what, that’s the reason for living and as you can tell, I think schools and education can be enormously important in teaching people how to do this.  

Dr Saima Rana CEO/Principal GEMS World Academy Chief Education Officer, GEMS Education Chief Education Ambassador, Varkey Foundation quotes Sunny Varkey, Founder and Executive Chairman, GEMS Education, on his story of ‘The Silver Bullet.’

SchoolsCompared.com: Racism, sexism, elitism, prejudice, inequality, poverty…. Will there ever be world without these things?

Dr Saima Rana, CEO/Principal, GEMS World Academy; Chief Education Officer, GEMS Education; and, Chief Education Ambassador, The Varkey Foundation:

Not in our lifetimes but even though things may seem bad we are making headway. Many things are better than they used to be. I don’t say that because I’m complacent about the terrible things that are happening all around us, but I think it’s important not to fall into the trap of thinking nothing has changed, and nothing can change – because that’s lazy too. For all the sexism in the world, women are better off than they’ve been throughout most of history. Racism is terrible but attitudes are massively changing even in the last 50 years. Think about slavery. It still exists and is morally repugnant but now it’s prohibited and can’t be flaunted. It is no longer thought acceptable and morally OK. We all need to double, treble our efforts to change these things and fight to make the world better – and as with everything, we need to do our homework, go beyond just emotions and hysteria, and work out what needs to be done – and then act. We know we can change, and we can do better but wishing on a star won’t help nor will throwing up our hands in despair. I think we all need to get working – too many people say they don’t like poverty, for example, but they do nothing about it.

Dr Saima Rana with Sunny Varkey, Founder and Executive Chairman of GEMS Education Group, discussing Teachers and The Future of Education

Our founder Mr Sunny Varkey once called education ‘the silver bullet’ – in other words it’s the solution to everything. I agree with him. It’s why since I was a little girl, I’ve never left the classroom and hope I never shall. It’s where education happens, where meanings and actions and solutions are forged. It’s the centre of the meaningful universe.

Awards

Dr Saima Rana, CEO/Principal of GEMS World Academy, Chief Education Officer of GEMS Education and Chief Education Ambassador of The Varkey Foundation is a finalist for the Top Schools Award for Best Principal in the United Arab Emirates 2023. 

GEMS World Academy, is a finalist for The Top Schools Award for Best School for Girls and Young Women in the United Arab Emirates. 

Further Information

You can read about GEMS Education and how it sees and nurtures genius in every child here.

Learn more about The Varkey Foundation here.

Visit the official GEMS World Academy web site here.

Read our interview with Dino Varkey, Group CEO of GEMS Education, here.

Learn why it is time to start building schools in Dubai and the UAE, now.

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