25. Merryland International School Abu Dhabi
Type of school: For-profit
Curriculum: Indian – British
Age of children: All-through
School size: 2702
Location: Musaffah, Abu Dhabi
Of all the schools to make our Top 25 Best Schools in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Merryland International School will certainly, for many, be the biggest surprise. And yet, of all the schools featured here, it is in many ways the most ambitious, heart-warming and extraordinary of them all. It is imperfect in many ways, particularly in its curious approach to SEN provision and restricted subject choice at IGCSE and A Level. But the school’s heart – and achievements – lie in the spaces between the dotted lines that are not so easily described numerically or in traditional ways of benchmarking a school.
The story begins and finds its expression in its founder who has taken a villa school and through a vocation for education, absolute commitment to her students, and love for her school (which has really become her life’s work) transformed it since her founding of the school in 1978, into an astonishing vehicle for education from the heart.
This is a school that pioneered robotics in the UAE. It’s also one that finds ADEC using words like visionary to describe it.
Merryland is also school that understands the responsibility of education, its capacity to shape the lives, the future, of the children that it nurtures, but also the wider role of education in contributing to the world outside its walls as each child goes on to graduate and find their place and vocation. It does so with the understanding that school days should be happy ones.
Imperfectly-perfect, it’s not a school that many parents will have heard of, least of all in the company here. But, for all its idiosyncrasies and flaws, it absolutely deserves its place in our roundup of the Top 25 Schools in Dubai and Abu Dhabi 2017. In many ways uniquely its own, it is the most remarkable and special of the schools of 2017 which, given present company, is quite the accolade.
Ratings
Independent feedback: *****
Care of children: *****
Leadership and Vision: *****
Whole and Individual child provision: *****
Facilities (relative to fees): *****
Parental engagement and community: *****
Happiness: *****
‘Bangs for the buck’: *****
KHDA/ADEC rating: Very Good with Outstanding Features
SchoolsCompared.com full review: Here
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