A small slice of Wollongong in Dubai, where the export of Australian education is big business
By Lucy Cormack
It’s a solid 12,034 kilometres from Wollongong to the sprawling desert metropolis of Dubai, where the globe’s east meets west.
Bordering the South Pacific Ocean, the laid-back beachside “Gong” could not be further from the glitzy Gulf city, where the population of 3.3 million dwarfs that of the surf town south of Sydney.
The glitzy desert metropolis of Dubai is a long way from Wollongong.Credit: iStock
And yet, this year almost 700 students in the United Arab Emirates will graduate from the University of Wollongong without ever stepping foot in NSW, clutching degrees and qualifications bearing the stamp of brand Australia.
They will join more than 13,000 alumni who have graduated from the university’s Dubai campus in its 30 years of education.
The campus located at the foot of Dubai’s infamous artificial island, The Palm Jumeirah, is one of three Australian universities to have found a home in the Gulf, with Perth’s Curtin and Murdoch universities also setting up shop in the past 16 years. Between 4000 and 4500 students are enrolled across the three institutions.
The UAE now hosts the highest number of students enrolled with Australian education providers at an offshore campus for any country outside of Asia.
The Victorian International School in Sharjah is on its way to opening seven campuses.Credit: Lucy Cormack
Australia’s influence on education in the UAE has been steadily growing since the University of Wollongong’s opening in 1993, and not just at a tertiary level.
When the ruler of Sharjah – the UAE’s third-largest city – paid a visit to the Victorian government in 2005, he was exploring a large commercial purchase of taxis, so the story goes. But the meeting also planted the seed for an educational partnership between the two governments, and Sheikh Dr Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi came home with a school instead.
Passionate about the power of quality education, Al Qasimi was impressed by the standard of Australian teaching and set about exporting it back to the Gulf.
“At the time there wasn’t a good international school in Sharjah. So, the Victorian government suggested maybe we could put a Victorian school here. His Highness said, ‘that’s a good idea, here’s the land’,” said Dean Pyrah, chief executive of the Victorian International School in Sharjah.
The Victorian International School in Sharjah.Credit: Lucy Cormack
For then-Victorian premier John Brumby, who opened the secondary school campus on a UAE trade mission in 2010, the venture could not be faulted. “It’s Victorian architects, Victorian teachers, Victorian system,” he said at the time.
It could seem an unconventional marriage between the state often described as Australia’s most progressive, and the most conservative and religious of the seven emirates – where alcohol is illegal, and the local economy (including schools) operates on a four-day week.
Sharjah is the last of the emirates to retain Friday as a holy day, after the UAE moved to adopt the western weekend of Saturday-Sunday in 2021. Elsewhere in the UAE, the weekend begins ahead of Friday prayers about 1pm.
Today Al Qasimi’s Victorian International School in Sharjah has expanded from one to soon-to-be seven schools. In coming years, the education network is expected to serve up to 7000 students the Victorian K-12 curriculum, along with the International Baccalaureate.
Three new secondary schools stretching across the 235 kilometre-emirate are under way, each at a cost of about 150 million dirhams ($60 million), plus another primary school with a similar price tag.
“It’s a big, big business now,” Pyrah said. “When our schools are finished, it’s probably about 1.5 billion dirhams ($590 million) in assets.”
Royal offspring from most of the northern emirates – Sharjah, Ajman and Umm Al Quwain – have all attended the Victorian International School, which promotes a “holistic, inquiry-based Australian curriculum” that respects the cultural heritage of the deeply Islamic state.
Australian teachers and curriculum are also in place at the Australian International School in Dubai, another K-12 college, which opened in 2021 in partnership with Education Queensland.
Children at the Victorian International School Sharjah in the UAE, where Australian education is big business.Credit: Lucy Cormack
“Australian institutions are tapping into growing demand for new modes and models of learning that open opportunities to expand transnational education through offshore campuses,” said Austrade’s head of International Education Melissa Banks.
Walking the grounds of the K-12 school campus in Sharjah, the school could be mistaken for any in Australia: large open-plan spaces, carpeted classrooms (such a rarity in the UAE that it had to be written into the government decree for the school), and brightly coloured learning resources running the length of the corridors.
In the primary school playground lined with date palms, excitable children hang from monkey bars and plead with “Mr Dean” for just one more game of scissors, paper, rock – unfazed by the near 40-degree summer’s day.
Victorian International School chief executive officer Dean Pyrah.Credit: Lucy Cormack
Its 1600 students represent 70 different nationalities and almost 90 per cent identify as Islamic. It has about 50 Australian students.
Other than civics, the curriculum mirrors that taught in Victorian classrooms. The school celebrates Australia Day and, pre-COVID, it boasted a rugby union team. Staff are offered fully furnished apartments in a neighbouring complex and, as in all the emirates, there is no personal income tax.
The school charges $16,040 for kindergarten, $23,931 for year 7 and $29,924 for year 12. The average monthly salary in the UAE is $5200.
While Sharjah paid an initial licence fee to the Victorian government, by 2006 the agreement evolved into a rolling memorandum of understanding, with the most recent signed by then-education minister James Merlino in 2017.
Pyrah said Australian values were taught and celebrated “within the boundaries of what is acceptable here”.
“You don’t really enter into the political or the religious sphere within the school ... things that are promoting same-sex marriage and things like that … you probably want to avoid having that on your book list. And you can do that. Simple as that,” he said.
“That’s part of what you do if you live here. They are just not subjects that the government believes should be discussed in schools at any level ... I don’t really have an opinion on it.”
In a statement published on the school’s website, Sheikh Al Qasimi said he was attracted to Australian schooling because it valued intellectual, cultural, athletic and social education.
“We invest without limits in the education of our sons and daughters. With knowledge and education, our societies will continue to advance in all fields,” he said.
Along with food, healthcare and technology, the export of Australian education to the UAE is big business.
International education is one of Australia’s largest export industries valued at $26.5 billion in 2022, in onshore, offshore and online institutions.
Last year education export earnings from the UAE were $14 million, with the average student spending more than $57,000. It marked a 1300 per cent increase on 2021 earnings, which were hit by the pandemic.
In Australia, about 180 students from the UAE are studying at local institutions.
Universities Australia chief executive Catriona Jackson said Australia’s universities shared more than 20 agreements to support research collaborations, and the mobility of students and staff in the UAE.
In 2009, a joint venture between TAFE NSW and the Abu Dhabi government resulted in the Abu Dhabi Vocational Education and Training Institute under a “build, operate, transfer” arrangement, while Western Sydney University is exploring academic collaborations in the region.
When the University of Wollongong Dubai first opened its doors in 1993, it was then the Institute of Australian Studies. Just five staff members taught English to eight students. Today, the university has almost 3000 undergraduate and postgraduate students and more than 300 staff. UOW also operates international campuses in Malaysia and Hong Kong.
The university’s president in Dubai Professor Mohamed-Vall Mohamed-Salem Zein said Australia was a genuine competitor in the education market against Britain and the US, despite having less established roots in the region.
“You would be surprised by how much the brand of Australia in education is highly regarded. I think, in a very modest way, Wollongong played a part of it,” he said.
“We have a lot of alumni who are doing extremely well in very senior positions in the government, police, the army and really senior people from different royal families.”
Professor Zein said the university was best known for its courses in STEM, computer science and business, for which the Australian curriculum was largely unchanged, insisting the university was committed to maintaining academic freedom.
“I don’t think Wollongong will bring a program to the Middle East, if the academic freedom will be restricted,” he said.
Earlier this year, the Australian government gifted UOW Dubai the former Australian Pavilion from the 2020 Dubai Expo, with the building to be repurposed as a data science, discovery and innovation centre.
In neighbouring Saudi Arabia, Australian education export earnings reached $188 million last year, with an average spend of $56,002 per student.
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