10 Year of Family
F ollowing the directive of His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, 2026 has been designated the Year of the Family, under the tagline Growing in Unity. Announced at the National Family Growth Agenda 2031 session during the UAE Government Annual Meetings, the declaration is more than a ceremonial theme. It is a national policy signal. And for education in the UAE, that signal has taken on a meaning nobody quite anticipated when the year began. This has been the year of the family in the most literal, lived sense. Families did not just lean into the theme. They lived it, daily, at the kitchen table, on the school run that wasn’t, in the group chats with teachers and in the day-to-day conversations with anxious kids and teenagers. This has been a semester unlike any other. Since late February 2026, distance learning was introduced as a precautionary measure amid regional security concerns linked to ongoing conflict, and what followed tested UAE families in ways few could have predicted. Parents juggled remote work and home schooling simultaneously, often under the strain of disrupted sleep due to middle-of-the-night emergency alerts, mental fatigue, and heightened stress. Then came the news that shook examination year groups most of all: every major exam board operating in the UAE cancelled or significantly disrupted its 2026 examinations. Cambridge, IB, Pearson Edexcel, OxfordAQA, CBSE, CISCE, the list was complete. For students holding conditional university offers, it was a mix of relief and uncertainty. Relief from the immediate pressure, but also anxiety around how grades would be determined and what it meant for their futures.
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