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RITIKA Sharma EMIRATES BUSINESS
The UAE has an unmatched 83 percent pre-primary enrolment rate spread across 500 nursery schools across the Emirates. What fuels the apparent growth of this segment is the growing number of expatriates and rising awareness among parents to take their children’s pre-school years seriously and choose a nursery of highest standards.
Reports state that the overall student population is expected to increase at an average annual rate of 5.6 percent between 2013 and 2017 to reach 0.7 million buoyed by the increasing popularity of international curriculum pre-schools in UAE. This is also attracting many big franchisee names make investments to set up their base in the Emirates.
Saurabh Narain, owner and manager of Dubai-based Maple Bear, the famous Canadian Curriculum a pre-school for children aged 18 months to 6 years, believes that the growth figures are encouraging for the owners of such nurseries and the industry on the whole. A second generation entrepreneur, Narain told Emirates Business, “It’s an area of great opportunity for pre-school and nursery education in the UAE and there are very exciting times ahead. At the moment, pre-school education in the country is quite fragmented and not as well organised as primary and secondary education, however this seems to be changing.