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Confusion over admission age for KG1 children
Confusion over KG1 admission age for kids prevails Olivia Olarte-Ulherr / 25 February 2014 According to the new rules by the MoE the new admission age for KG1 should be four years, KG2 is five years and Grade 1 is six years. While the admission age for new students was already made clear to schools across the UAE, many private schools, however, are still waiting to hear from their respective education zones. “Till now we did not receive (a circular) from the Ministry of Education (MoE) and so we will inquire about this from the MoE. I know they already sent a letter to some areas,” said Said Al Najjar, principal of the Elite American Private School in Umm Al Quwain. Classes at the school are still ongoing and registration for the new academic year has yet to commence. The Elite currently accepts three year olds by September 15 for its KG1. “We are not registering (new students) yet. But once we receive the circular, we will apply the rule,” he affirmed. The Modern Indian School, Dibba Branch, has started accepting registration for their new academic year in April, but has yet to receive word from the Fujairah education zone if they need to abide by the new admission age of four years old for KG1. “We are accepting three years old for KG1 for now but we are still waiting. We didn’t receive any circular and we already inquired with the Fujairah education zone but they said they will get back to us,” said a school staff. The St Mary’s Catholic School, which offers the Indian and British curricula in Fujairah, also said they have not received any circular on this regard. “We have followed-up so many times with the MoE Fujairah but have received no circular, so we will go ahead as usual,” said Layla Mohammed, the Arabic secretary at the school. The school accepts 3.5 years for KG1. Its CBSE curriculum starts in April while classes at the British curriculum commences in September. According to the new rules by the MoE, which is now enforced in public and private schools in Abu Dhabi, Sharjah, Ras Al Khaimah and Ajman, the new admission age for KG1 (or Foundation Stage 2) should be four years, KG2 (or Year 1) is five years and Grade 1 (or Year 2) is six years. Students should reach the minimum age by the end of April for those joining the Bangladesh schools in January, by July 31 for Asian and Indian schools commencing classes in April and by December 31 for other curricula that starts their school year in September. The new admission age takes effect this 2014-2015 academic year. This applies only to new students and will not affect those currently studying. The Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA) confirmed last week that the new rules do not apply to private schools in Dubai and that “the minimum age is determined by each school/curricula.” According to Dr Haleemah Sadia, principal of the Indian International School Sharjah, her school has already registered new students prior to receiving the circular in January. “We have 150 admissions from the early registration but now we have stopped and are registering as per the new age criteria. We are now in the process of trying to get approval from the MoE for them (early admissions),” she told Khaleej Times. The school previously accepted three year olds for KG1. The Gulf Asian English School in Sharjah and the Indian School in Ras Al Khaimah also confirmed that its new admission age for KG1 is now four years by July 31. The Ajman Modern School, meanwhile, has already set its admission age at four years for KG1 and five years for KG2 by December 31. The American school previously accepted 3.3 years for KG1. Parents from across the country expressed their concern, especially those whose kids are affected by the cut-off. Anitta Joy, a mother from Abu Dhabi, said that her daughter will be four years by August 12, and just 12 days shy of the minimum admission age for the Indian school. Asiya Shaikh has applied at two schools in Ras Al Khaimah for her daughter but was denied admission as she did not reach the age requirement by 19 days while Lakshmi, from Sharjah, said that her daughter is a month less. All mothers are hoping to get special approval from their respective education zones. “This new rule has made a whole lot of mess and has put lot of parents under stress,” complained Lakshmi. Santhosh Joseph from Abu Dhabi is in the same boat. He has been told that his child is four days less than the minimum age requirement and should apply only next year as per the Abu Dhabi Education Council (Adec) rule. “What can we do, we have to wait for one year as there is no chance. My wife and I are just worried that there is an age limit for KG1 and she will be overage at 4.7 years next year,” he pointed out. According to the Adec’s Private School and Quality Assurance (PSQA) sector, there is “no exemption” to the new age rule even if a child is a day short of the cut-off dates. It added that there is also no age ceiling for KG1 and that a child of 4.7 years can still enrol next year. Continuing students Swapna Edward’s son is finishing KG1 in India this March and she plans to bring him to Abu Dhabi to continue his studies. She approached the Indian schools here but was told that he is two months short for the KG2 admission age. “Many Indian schools informed us if the transfer is from India, the ‘new age rule’ will be followed, (but) if he is studying in the UAE, then they can consider. So I approached the Adec directly and got a positive reply that he can continue in KG2. They informed me that ‘there is no separate rule for transfer from India’,” Edward said. The Adec confirmed that once a child has a certificate showing he finished KG1, his studies will not be disturbed and he can continue his studies here similar to other continuing students, regardless of the age. In a circular sent to schools by the Adec in December 2013, it noted that the new enrolment ages do “not apply to any current or transferring students”. olivia@khaleejtimes.com For more news from Khaleej Times, follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/khaleejtimes , and on Twitter at @khaleejtimes Continue reading
Ukraine points west as US warns Russia against force
Ukraine points west as US warns Russia against force (Reuters) / 24 February 2014 US, Britain warn Russia against military intervention; acting president says European integration a top priority. Ukraine’s new interim president pledged to put the country back on course for European integration now Moscow-backed Viktor Yanukovich had been ousted, while the United States warned Russia against sending in its forces. Ukrainian opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko (C) meets with US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt (L) and head of the EU Delegation to Ukraine Jan Tombinski in Kiev. -Reuters As rival neighbours east and west of the former Soviet republic said a power vacuum in Kiev must not lead to the country breaking apart, acting president Oleksander Turchinov said on Sunday that Ukraine’s new leadership wanted relations with Russia on a “new, equal and good-neighbourly footing that recognises and takes into account Ukraine’s European choice”. A day after Yanukovich fled to the Russian-speaking east following dozens of deaths during street protests aimed at toppling him, parliament named new speaker Turchinov as interim head of state. An ally of the ousted leader’s long jailed rival Yulia Tymoshenko, he aims to swear in a government by Tuesday that can provide authority until a presidential election on May 25. With battle-hardened, pro-Western protesters in control of central Kiev and determined to hold their leaders to account, lawmakers rushed through decisions to cement their power, display their rejection of rampant corruption and bring to book officials who ordered police to fire on Independence Square. But whoever takes charge as interim prime minister faces a huge challenge to satisfy popular expectations and will find an economy in deep crisis, even if the EU makes good on new offers of aid that may help make up for loans that Russia has frozen. Scuffles in Russian-speaking Crimea and some eastern cities between supporters of the new, pro-EU order in Kiev and those anxious to stay close to Moscow revived fears of separatism that a week earlier were focused on the west, where Ukrainian nationalists had disowned Yanukovich and proclaimed self-rule. President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, was asked on US television about the possibility of Russia sending troops to Ukraine, which President Vladimir Putin had hoped Yanukovich would keep closely allied to Moscow. “That would be a grave mistake,” Rice said. “It’s not in the interests of Ukraine or of Russia or of Europe or the United States to see a country split. It’s in nobody’s interest to see violence return and the situation escalate.” Yanukovich’s flight into hiding left Putin’s Ukraine policy in tatters, on a day he had hoped eyes would be on the grand finale to the Sochi Olympics. The Kremlin leader spoke on Sunday with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose foreign minister had brokered a short-lived truce in Kiev on Friday. They agreed Ukraine’s “territorial integrity” must be maintained, Merkel’s spokesman said in a statement. British Foreign Secretary William Hague was asked if Russia might “send in the tanks” to defend its interests among ethnic Russians in the east and on the Crimea peninsula, where Moscow bases its Black Sea Fleet: “It would really not be in the interests of Russia to do any such thing,” he told the BBC. Earlier this month, a Kremlin aide warned that Moscow could intervene and accused Washington of breaching their 1994 treaty under which Russia removed Soviet nuclear weapons from Ukraine. It is unlikely the United States and its allies in Nato would risk an outright military confrontation with Russia but such rhetoric, laden with echoes of the Cold War, underlines the high stakes in Ukraine, whose 46 million people and sprawling territory are caught in a geopolitical tug of war. EU officials offered financial aid to a new government and to revive a trade deal that Yanukovich spurned under Russian pressure in November, sparking the protests that drove him from office after 82 deaths last week, many from police sniper fire. EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton will travel to Ukraine on Monday to discuss economic help, the EU said. The United States has also promised help. But budgets are tight in the EU and Washington, and international creditors like the IMF may remain wary of Yanukovich’s opponents, whose years in government before him were no economic success story. However, concern about instability and a popular desire to be seen backing what looks to Western voters like a democratic movement threatened by Russian diktat may loosen purse strings – at least to tide Ukraine over until after the elections. In Russia, where Putin hoped to count on Ukraine as a key element in a union of ex-Soviet states and might also fear the Kiev uprising could inspire his own opponents, the finance minister said the next tranche of a $15-billion loan package agreed in December would not be paid, at least before a new government is formed. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, according to his office, told US Secretary of State John Kerry the opposition had “seized power” by force by ignoring the EU-brokered truce on Friday that left Yanukovich in office for the time being. Lavrov said that power-sharing agreement should be revived. However, even lawmakers from Yanukovich’s own party voted for his removal on Saturday and issued a statement blaming him and his entourage for the crisis. Business “oligarchs” – rich from control of ex-Soviet assets – also distanced themselves from a man long seen as their representative in the presidency. In a mark of passions dividing Ukrainians along a historic faultline between Russian and Ukrainian cultures, local television in Kerch, in eastern Crimea, showed a crowd hauling down the blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag in front of the town hall and hoisting the white, blue and red Russian tricolour. Yanukovich, whose whereabouts remain unclear but who may be in his home city of Donetsk near the Russian border, accused opponents of a Nazi-style coup and said he remained in power. In a hectic round of voting in parliament, lawmakers rushed in some crowd-pleasing measures against the ousted administration, conscious that those still occupying Independence Square – or the Maidan – remain deeply suspicious of the political class. They stripped Yanukovich of his abandoned country home near Kiev. Its brash opulence, complete with ostrich farm and hot tubs, was put on display within hours and fuelled demands that the rough-hewn former petty criminal from the eastern coalfields be held to account for stealing taxpayer billions. Several officials and ministers were singled out for being removed from office, among them an education minister accused of promoting a Russian view of Ukrainian history. Parliament-appointed security officials announced legal moves against members of the ousted administration and those responsible for police attacks on the Maidan last week. Newly appointed speaker Oleksander Turchinov, now acting president, said a government should be in place by Tuesday. His ally, Tymoshenko, defeated by Yanukovich in a 2010 presidential election and later jailed for corruption, ruled herself out as interim premier. Freed from a prison hospital on Saturday after more than two years in jail, she may want time to recover and build support before running for the presidency. As prime minister following the largely peaceful Orange Revolution of 2004-05, which overturned a first presidential victory by Yanukovich, Tymoshenko disappointed many in Ukraine who had hoped for an end to the corruption and failed economic policies that marked the aftermath of Soviet communism. “In these days the most important thing is to form a functioning government,” said Vitaly Klitschko, a former world boxing champion and also a possible presidential contender. “We have to take very important steps in order to ensure the survival of the economy, which is in a very bad shape,” he told a news conference. He denied there had been a coup. “Parliament is the last legal official institution in Ukraine,” he said. “Nobody knows where the president of Ukraine is. We tried to find him all day yesterday. His location is unknown. He left the country without a president.” For more news from Khaleej Times, follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/khaleejtimes , and on Twitter at @khaleejtimes Continue reading
Facebook to buy WhatsApp for $19 billion in deal shocker
Facebook to buy WhatsApp for $19 billion in deal shocker (Reuters) / 20 February 2014 Facebook’s purchase of messaging service WhatsApp for up to $19 billion in cash and stock is one of the largest acquisitions ever in the technology sector. The WhatsApp and Facebook app icons on an iPhone in New York. AP Facebook Inc will buy fast-growing mobile-messaging startup WhatsApp for $19 billion in cash and stock in a landmark deal that places the world’s largest social network closer to the heart of mobile communications and may bring younger users into the fold. The transaction involves $4 billion in cash, $12 billion in stock and $3 billion in restricted stock that vests over several years. The WhatsApp deal is worth more than Facebook raised in its own IPO and underscores the social network’s determination to win the market for messaging. Facebook-WhatsApp deal one of biggest ever in tech Here are some other notable deals involving US tech companies, in order of dollar amount from largest to smallest: HEWLETT-PACKARD BUYS COMPAQ – SEPTEMBER 2001 US technology giant Hewlett-Packard buys Compaq Computer for $25 billion in a bid to compete with IBM. GOOGLE BUYS MOTOROLA MOBILITY – AUGUST 2011 Internet search giant Google buys the handset business of Motorola for $12.5 billion in a bid to challenge Apple in the smartphone market. Less than three years later, Google sold Motorola to China’s Lenovo for $2.91 billion. HEWLETT-PACKARD BUYS AUTONOMY – AUGUST 2011 US technology giant Hewlett-Packard buys British enterprise software company Autonomy for $10.24 billion. US authorities later open an investigation amid HP accusations that Autonomy had engaged in “accounting improprieties.” MICROSOFT BUYS SKYPE – MAY 2011 Microsoft buys Internet voice and video leader Skype for $8.5 billion, the largest acquisition ever by the US software giant. ORACLE BUYS SUN – APRIL 2009 US business software giant Oracle buys struggling Sun Microsystems and its Java programming language for $7.4 billion. MICROSOFT BUYS NOKIA – SEPTEMBER 2013 Microsoft buys the handset business of former market leader Nokia for $7.2 billion in an effort to catch up to rivals Apple and Google in the smartphone market. GOOGLE BUYS YOUTUBE – OCTOBER 2006 Internet search giant Google buys online video platform YouTube in October 2006 from its founders, Steve Chen and Chad Hurley, for $1.65 billion. EBAY BUYS PAYPAL – JUNE 2002 Online auction house eBay buys online payments firm PayPal for $1.5 billion. YAHOO BUYS TUMBLR – MAY 2013 Former Google executive Marissa Mayer makes her biggest purchase since taking over as CEO of Yahoo, buying the popular blogging platform Tumblr for $1.1 billion. FACEBOOK BUYS INSTAGRAM – APRIL 2012 Facebook offers $1 billion for hot smartphone photo-sharing service Instagram. The purchase of Instagram was Facebook’s largest until the WhatsApp deal. Founded by a Ukrainian immigrant who dropped out of college, Jan Koum, and a Stanford alumnus, Brian Acton, WhatsApp is a Silicon Valley startup fairy tale, rocketing to 450 million users in five years and adding another million daily. “No one in the history of the world has ever done something like this,” Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on a conference call on Wednesday. Zuckerberg, who famously closed a $1 billion deal to buy photo-sharing service Instagram over a weekend in mid-2012, revealed on Wednesday that he proposed the tie-up over dinner with CEO Koum just 10 days earlier, on the night of February 9. WhatsApp was the leader among a wave of smartphone-based messaging apps that are now sweeping across North America, Asia and Europe. Although WhatsApp has adhered strictly to its core functionality of mimicking texting, other apps, such as Line in Japan or Tencent Holdings Ltd’s WeChat, offer games or even e-commerce on top of their popular messaging features. The deal provides Facebook entree to new users, including teens who eschew the mainstream social networks but prefer WhatsApp and rivals, which have exploded in size as private messaging takes off. “People are calling them ‘Facebook Nevers,’” said Jeremy Liew, a partner at Lightspeed and an early investor in Snapchat. How the service will pay for itself is not yet clear. Zuckerberg and Koum on the conference call did not say how the company would make money beyond a $1 annual fee, which is not charged for the first year. “The right strategy is to continue to focus on growth and product,” Zuckerberg said. Zuckerberg and Koum said that WhatsApp will continue to operate independently, and promised to continue its policy of no advertising. “Communication is the one thing that you have to use daily, and it has a strong network effect,” said Jonathan Teo, an early investor in Snapchat, another red-hot messaging company that flirted year ago with a multibillion dollar acquisition offer from Facebook. “Facebook is more about content and has not yet fully figured out communication.” Price tag Even so, many balked at the price tag. Facebook is paying $42 per user with the deal, dwarfing its own $33 per user cost of acquiring Instagram. By comparison, Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten just bought messaging service Viber for $3 per user, in a $900 million deal. Rick Summer, an analyst with Morningstar, warned that while investors may welcome the addition of such a high-growth asset, it may point to an inherent weakness in the social networking company that has seen growth slow in recent quarters. “This is a tacit admission that Facebook can’t do things that other networks are doing,” he said, pointing to the fact that Facebook had photo-sharing and messaging before it bought Instagram and WhatsApp. “They can’t replicate what other companies are doing so they go out and buy them. That’s not all together encouraging necessarily and I think deals like these won’t be the last one and that is something for investors to consider.” Venture capitalist Sequoia Capital, which invested in WhatsApp in February 2011 and led three rounds of financing altogether, holds a stake worth roughly $3 billion of the $19 billion valuation, according to people familiar with the matter. “Goodness gracious, it’s a good deal for WhatsApp,” said Teo, the early investor in Snapchat. Facebook pledged a break-up fee of $1 billion in cash and $1 billion in stock if the deal falls through. Facebook was advised by Allen & Co, while WhatsApp has enlisted Morgan Stanley for the deal. Shares in Facebook slid 2.5 percent to $66.36 after hours, from a close of $68.06 on the Nasdaq. “No matter how you look at it this is an expensive deal and a very big bet and very big bets either work out or they perform quite poorly,” Summer said. “Given the relative size, the enterprise valuations this is a very significant deal and it may not be the last one.” WhatsApp: a booming smartphone message service WhatsApp was launched five years ago as a shot at doing to text messaging what Skype did to telephone calls. If Facebook’s move to buy the startup in a cash-and-stock deal valued as high as $19 billion is any indication, the California-based WhatsApp may have hit the mark. The firm founded by former Yahoo employees Brian Acton and Jan Koum in 2009 took its name from a play on the phrase “What’s Up,” according to its website. They also devoted themselves to a credo of “No Ads. No Games. No Gimmicks.” A note stating just that and signed by Acton remains taped to Koum’s desk, according to venture capital firm Sequoia, which invested in the startup early and stands to cash in big time on the Facebook take-over. The “contrarian approach” of gathering no information about users for targeting ads was shaped by Ukraine-born Koum’s aversion to tactics of secret police in communist countries, Sequoia partner Jim Goetz said in an online note. “Jan’s childhood made him appreciate communication that was not bugged or taped,” Goetz said. “When he arrived in the US as a 16-year-old immigrant living on food stamps, he had the extra incentive of wanting to stay in touch with his family in Russia and the Ukraine.” Koum remained true to those ideas when, after working at Yahoo with his “mentor” Acton, he turned to building WhatsApp, according to Goetz. The stated mission was to build a better alternative to traditional SMS messaging in a world where smartphones were clearly becoming ubiquitous. The founders jokingly described themselves at the website as “two guys who spent combined 20 years doing geeky stuff at Yahoo! Inc.” WhatsApp is a platform for sending images, video, audio, or text messages for free over the Internet using data connections of smartphones. The application is free, but after using it for a year, there is an annual subscription fee of 99 cents. “We feel that this model will allow us to become the communications service of the 21 st century, and provide you the best way to stay in touch with your friends and family with no ads getting in the way,” the startup said in a blog post discussing pricing. WhatsApp is reported to have grown stunningly fast to more than 450 million users and said to handle 50 billion messages daily. As of the start of this year, WhatsApp had 50 employees, more than 30 of them engineers. While the company has its headquarters in the California city of Mountain View, where Google has its main campus, most of the engineering work is reportedly done in Russia. – AFP For more news from Khaleej Times, follow us on Facebook at facebook.com/khaleejtimes , and on Twitter at @khaleejtimes Continue reading
