Kent College Dubai, Meydan City, Nad Al Sheba – THE REVIEW 2022

Updated October 2020 – Kent College Dubai, new school leadership, Expansion of BTEC, IB Career-related Programme ambitions, Scholarships and Schoolscompared.com verdict 2022

Background – UK roots in values and a culture of kindness

https://youtu.be/VhTzVT7_z44

Opened in 2016, Kent College Dubai is the second campus of Kent College, Canterbury, United Kingdom. The school is insistent that it is neither a franchise, nor a school run simply under a brand – Kent College is the “real deal”. The school is managed in partnership with the UK as a second campus and the aim is that, to all intents and purposes, children attending the Dubai campus should experience the Canterbury experience – and changing between schools, when and if required, should be relatively seamless.

Culturally the UK context provides for a caring Christian family community based on a Methodist school foundation “with religious education a strong feature of the curriculum, whilst welcoming members of other faiths, and none, in a spirit of openness and tolerance.”  The school’s motto is “Lux tua via mea”: which means “Your light is my way” and the school has 13 sister schools all connected by their Methodist foundations.

The school is known colloquially as “KC” and notable alumni of the UK school include the Conservative MP John Redwood; The (Labour) Deputy Speaker, Natascha Engel; composer, Raymond Yiu; Anthony Scrivener QC; Simon Dingemans, CFO at GlaxoSmithKline [GSK]; and, in a UAE twist, Tim Clark, the President and Chief Executive Officer of Emirates Airlines whose view of his experience at the school can be found in the video above.

 

In the UK, the Junior School, whilst providing for a natural slipstream to the larger Senior School, is geographically separate and sited some one mile away. The Junior school was founded much later, in 1946; Kent College itself, as a Senior School, has a history stretching back to 1885. All parts of the school will be within striking distance on the Dubai campus – an advantage over its UK sibling.

Kent College, both within its Junior and Senior Schools, achieves an ISI “Outstanding” rating in every category of inspection. This is the second highest award given by the ISI after the extremely rarely awarded “Exceptional” and inspection areas include governance, leadership, academic achievements, extra-curricular provision, pastoral care, teaching, learning and personal development and facility provision. Make no mistake, Kent College is an exceptional school by any standards.

There are structural differences, however.

First, in scale. The Dubai campus will educate over three times the number of children. In the UK, the whole school, Junior and Senior combined, educates just 700 children. In Dubai the eventual capacity is 2120.

The contrast becomes even more stark at Foundation Stage/Junior levels where in the UK the school educates only 170 children – in Dubai it will be more than six times larger with up to 1100 pupils.

Whether these dynamics will allow Kent to port its character easily is not by any means a certainty, notwithstanding a commitment to limit class sizes to 20 pupils.

Second, in Dubai, the relatively modest 13-acre (53,000 square metre) site contrasts with its UK sister’s 80 acres for the Senior School including the Moat Estate farm to which the children have access. In Dubai, however, a strong emphasis will be placed on the outstanding equestrian infrastructure afforded within Meydan City which provides some balance. Different also does not inevitably mean worse, and Meydan, in particular, offers in its Equestrian links a real positive over the UK school. The school’s owners, Meydan MHK Education LLC FZ, describe it as central to the larger US$ 70-80 million initiative to build “Nurseries & Kindergartens, a Primary and Secondary British School (K-12), a British Boarding School, and a Finishing School for Girls” within the broader framework of the Meydan City project.

Interestingly the UK school site brands the Dubai campus with almost equal weight to its home grown school on its front page and there is a real sense that the bridge between both schools could be greater than many of the school’s UK-UAE peers in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

Facilities

Facilities at Kent College Dubai pretty much deliver on the original promise to be top tier to match the ultra-premium fee structure. They needed to be as Kent has launched into one of the most competitive premium school environments anywhere in the world, notwithstanding the shortage of places. Thus far facilities include dedicated EYFS provision promising “calm, beauty and inspiration”; separate dedicated Junior (aged 5 – 7 years, spread over two floors) and Senior Schools (aged 8-18) mirroring the UK structure; cricket and hockey pitches; a swimming pool; athletics track; netball and basketball courts; “beautiful” KS1 play areas; dance studios; large, comfortable and fabulously equipped 458-seat theatre/auditorium (on our visit Broadway musicals including Mama Mia were being rehearsed); food and nutrition labs; arts studio, music rooms; drama studios; Science Laboratories (Chemistry, Physics, General Science); Music Technology Labs; Design Technology workshops; Food Technology Labs; Health Suite; Fitness Rooms; and separate junior and senior libraries. The Dining Rooms have yet to be commissioned (PH7 will provide the catering in both the ground floor and 1st floor dining spaces when they come on stream).

The Sports Hall is large and contains bleacher seating as well as a dividing curtain.  In total the area is marked out for 8 badminton courts, 3 Basketball courts and an additional court to accommodate Hockey, Handball or Football.  Swimming is to be provided by M&S Sports, who will offer Football too.  The Pool is 25M.  Kent has already enjoyed some success in inter-school leagues and competitions. External fields cover a large area of the campus, and include a 2G Astroturf Hockey Court, a 4G Astroturf Rugby Pitch and Football pitch.  The school is keen to develop Hockey (which is often not continued at Secondary, arguably because DASSA (the sport’s regulatory body in UAE) have hitherto focused on Primary school Leagues ( JESS, Kings, Kent).  Kent are keen to develop Hockey at a more senior level if they can and have attracted Youth and Adult Hockey Academies with the indoor and outdoor hockey facilities they offer.  Similarly they are keen to develop Basketball and may well be the only School in Dubai able to offer facilities for a Basketball Tournament rather than the existing League game options.

In March 2017, the new Secondary School building opened and in 2020 the school completed its opening to offer full all-through provision to British Sixth Form.

Curriculum

A stand-out feature of the school stems from its being structured to offer fully dual-stream International Baccalaureate/A’ Level post-16 provision. We have strongly argued that schools exclusively offering the IB Diploma can place too significant academic demands on children and the initial launch of the school to provide A Levels was a good one. The IB Diploma compliments this provision for the very brightest, polymath, linguistically talented children. Today its breadth of qualification pathways we rate exceptional, with outstanding breadth of subject options offered across both its technical stream and academic stream qualification pathways. The new British T Level would be an interesting addition to the Kent curriculum when it becomes more established.

Current qualification pathways (2022) include:

• A Levels (Academic pathways – 18 subject options)
• International Baccalaureate Diploma (Academic pathway – 14 subject options plus the IB Core)
• BTEC (Technical pathway – 3 subject options: Performing Arts, Business or Sport)
• International Baccalaureate Career-related Programme (Technical pathway – 14 subject options hubbed in BTEC (above))

More information on the breadth of GCSE and A’ Level provision can be found below.

School Leadership

The school’s Founding Principal, Patrick Lee-Browne, was recruited from Rydal Penrhos – one of Wales top independents and a sister Methodist school with Kent. Instrumental in early-stage planning of the new Kent Dubai campus, he was an obvious fit and brings with him a reputation for getting things done. Mr Lee-Browne led the school after the Rydal and Penhros school’s merger, no small feat; is wedded to the cultural Methodist whole-child culture underpinning Kent; and his training as a solicitor gave him an eye for detail seen as critical in the launch and development of the new school.

In August 2018 Anthony Cashin, joined the school. Mr Cashin brought with him more than 30 years experience drawn from across schools in Australia, Japan, Denmark, Thailand, Oman, Ajman and, latterly, as Principal and CEO of GEMS Metropole in Motor City. Mr Cashin held particularly expertise in establishing both the English National Curriculum and the International Baccalaureate in new schools and in ensuring that Arabic subjects were delivered with passion and impact rather than being just paid lip service.

In 2022, Jared Nolan was announced as the new Headmaster of Kent College Dubai. Mr Nolan is a psychologist by training, achieving his Bachelors at the UK’s Open University in 2003. This was followed by post graduate qualifications in education with specialism in Psychology and Law at the University of Portsmouth (2005) and in general education at the University of Gloucestershire (2006).  Mr Nolan secured his Masters in Educational Leadership and Management from the University of South Wales in 2017. He holds the official National Professional Qualification for Headteachers from the Government of Wales, UK.

Unusually, Mr Nolan brings with him considerable experience in the UK police force prior to his pursuing his career in education, having spent more than 12 years, between 1993 and 2005, working as a Detective for Heddlu Gwent Police specialising in Serious Crime and Child Protection. During this time he was awarded the rare Chief Constable Commendation for ‘commitment, perseverance and professionalism to duty.’

In 2005 he embarked on his career in education, fast-tracking to an appointment as Deputy Head and then, extraordinarily, to Acting Headteacher at the USK Church in Wales Primary School in just 3 months. Five years as the school led to his appointment as Headteacher of the Charles Williams Church in Wales nursery, infant and Junior School, a position he held for four years before appointment as International Head of School at the Tier 1 Nord Anglia Education British International School Shanghai during which he climbed the Himalayas with his wife Emma to reach Everest Base Camp:

“Being a school leader, it was the children we met on the journey that spoke loudest to me. From the 4-year-old girl who had set up her own mud kitchen to make a Nepali curry, to playing football with local village children at 4,000 meters, there was a simple joy to be found.

This joy and gratitude was even evident in the 13-year-old boy who lost his father in the earthquake and in order to survive was carrying incredibly heavy loads for miles between villages, at altitudes that make it difficult for most of us to carry ourselves.

I returned from Nepal changed. The time to walk and think, the majesty of the mountains, the hardiness and friendliness of the people and of course, the joy in the children, have all encouraged me to consider my own life and values with a little more clarity.”

Mr Nolan joins Kent College from his role at Al Yasmina Academy as Principal and Chief Executive Officer.. He operated across all Aldar Education’s UK Curriculum Schools, supporting the group Director of Education to improve school performance. He brings with him critical expertise in student formative assessment data and its role in providing essential insight for schools to deliver better educational outcomes for children and accurate school evaluation. He is deeply committed to personalised teaching and better identifying individual learning support needs to ensure that no child is ever left behind and all children meet their ambitions and potential.

Feedback to ourselves and our sister site, WhichSchoolAdvisor, for Mr Nolan has been uniformly outstanding.

Kent College Dubai Scholarships and Bursaries

Impressively, Kent College, like its UK founding school, is deeply committed to its scholarship provision at Sixth Form. The Kent College Scholarship Programme offers a 50% reduction in 4 areas:

Bottom line? The SchoolsCompared.com Verdict 2022

We think that Kent College Dubai is an exceptional school.

Do not expect a replica of its UK home school – that is not the point. Kent College Dubai has its own culture and unique “way” and does not simply replicate a mythical slice of “little England.” Neither the school, or parents, have ever wanted that. Rather it is a structurally very different school, in a very different part of the world, – but one that celebrates the values and integrity of its UK home campus.

The very close relationship between campuses in Canterbury and Meydan, which is a transparently genuine one and heavily built into the DNA of the school’s founding, affords students a tremendous opportunity to be educated under the Kent umbrella and join a body of very impressive alumni that traverse every corner of the world.

This is a school that has evolved slowly and carefully into its buildings. It retains an extraordinary intimacy and inspiring happy school dynamics. Inclusion is genuine – and evidenced by its extraordinary commitment to subject breadth and qualification pathways – some of the best of any school in the UAE. There is a real, palpable sense that children and faculty work together to evolve the school – and students resolutely come first.

This is a school with a definite “wow!” factor – not simply because of the facilities, as exciting as they are, but, much more importantly, because of the dynamic and inspirational working together of the school, its faculty and the children they serve.

We particularly praise the school for its dual stream A Level, BTEC and International Baccalaureate Diploma/Career-related programme Sixth Form. This is an outstanding offer for young men and women. We rate the International Baccalaureate Career-related Programme very highly, as on par with the International Baccalaureate Diploma – and a fabulous alternative to A Levels for students with a mix of academic and technical interests, ability, potential and career aspirations.

The IB CP programme, like A levels, opens doors to all the Tier 1 universities worldwide and is arguably the most accomplished of all the technical university pre-qualifiers worldwide. One key test for us of a school’s genuine breadth of subject offer, and this commitment to inclusion and meeting the needs of all children, is the provision of both technical and academic streams for children.

The commitment to scholarships provision is another stand-out feature of the school – and probably the most thoughtful of any Scholarship Programme in the UAE. The fee remission element is generous – but it is the parallel, highly personalised programmes of enhanced mentoring that come with scholarships that makes these so attractive and impressive.

The launch of BTEC is also hugely creditable.

Very highly recommended.