AJYAL International School, Mohammed Bin Zayed City – The Review

Ajyal International School is the first school established by the newly established Bin Omeir Education Foundation. The Foundation was established by the influential and respected Mohamed Omeir Bin Yousef Al-Mehairi, owner of the Bin Omeir Holding Group, as a means for the Group to significantly invest in the development of human capital in the UAE. The group has no existing experience in the educational sector to draw on and the school is being managed in association with SSAT Education, an educational consultancy.

The school was inspected by ADEC in April 2015 and scored in the lowest band of satisfactory. Whilst the buildings themselves are (genuinely) impressive, easily meeting the requirements of an ADEC “High Performing School,” these remain at odds with currently weak performance levels, particularly for a school targeting High Performing Tier 1 status. Whilst progress and provision is weak relative to other new schools developed by groups with a history of educational provision, prospective and existing parents should have confidence that the school’s parent has the resources to effect change over time. Given the level of investment in the school’s buildings, and the profile of the school’s founders, it is unlikely the school will be allowed to fail.

Inspectors specifically made clear in their report that the satisfactory rating should be understood in the context of “a new school at the start of its journey.” They made clear that:

“The leadership team, with the support of the whole staff, has laid solid foundations. They are aware of what needs to be done and are adept at taking effective actions, albeit one step at a time, due to the limited capacity of the small team. The owners’ representative is supportive and understands the school is at the start of its journey. Leaders at all levels are well qualified and experienced and demonstrate good capacity to make the necessary improvements.” [ADEC 2015]

Prospective parents should weigh this in the balance when making their decision.

Originally advertised fees of AED 26,000 to AED 55,000 were ranged AED 25,500 to AED 44,500 at the time of inspection and the fee structure has been withdrawn from the web site (January 2016)

Issues identified by ADEC include:

• Below age related expectation attainment in English and Science
• Weakness in Arabic attainment including the inability of older children toreadtheHolyQur’anaccurately (byemployingthe‘Tajweed’rules)
• Below internationally expected standards of English
• Weakness in writing skills, limited range of sentence construction, poor vocabulary and some inaccuracy in both spelling and grammar
• Limited opportunity and scope to apply education outside text books
• Unsystematic use of teachers’ own teaching methodologies
• Weaknesses in the supervision of students at break times result in students not being protected from bullying, including a small minority of older boys making younger children feel unsafe with fighting. Some students had “no confidence” in the school’s ability to protect them and felt unsafe
• Only a small minority of teaching meeting a “good” standard, the large majority is “satisfactory.”
• Not effectively recognising EAL needs of students and ineffectively deployed support staff
• Inexperienced KG level teachers still developing an understanding of how young children learn through play and initiating their own activities
• Ineffective promotion of higher order, critical and creative thinking
• Variable quality of marking resulting in students being unaware of the targets they should be reaching
• Limited opportunities for extra-curricular activities,trips and visits to enrich students
• Staff undermining the school’s behaviour policy by not following it themselves undermining its credibility with students
• A limited number of library books
• Parents largely supportive of the school
• An owners’ representative at the heart of the school and supportive of the school’s needs to meet required improvements

Key positives include

 

• State-of-the-art building, facilities and resources
• Good progress in UAE social studies
• Progress made given the challenges of establishing a new school
• Involvement of teachers and their empowerment in development of the school
• Ethos and shared commitment to improvement
• Leadership whilst satisfactory, not “Good”, is improving
• Students clearly understanding what they are learning
• Harmonious relationships evidenced in almost all lessons
• Age related expectations for EAL speakers at KG level being met
• Attainment meeting age related expectations in mathematics
• Students respectful of the values of the UAE, proud of their heritage with an understanding of the different cultures represented in the UAE
• Majority of teaching, although not “good,” is mostly more than satisfactory
• Better teaching in English, Mathematics and Science
• Broad, balanced, motivational and relevant curriculum planned to promote personal progression and personal development of students
• Students knowing who to go to if they feel unsafe and a clear child protection policy being in place
• Injuries being dealt with swiftly
• At KG level, behaviour being generally positive with “no apparent instances of disruption or anxiety”
• A sufficient number of qualified and competent teachers
• Ratio of students to teachers being good in almost all classes
• Very good science and IT resources

The WhichSchoolAdvisor.com inspection undertaken in 2014-15 noted inadequate development of the school externally, with grounds painfully at odds with the quality of the building. They were concerned that the school had opened without proper playing fields or a setting able to inspire the children. The outside spaces had instead been used as a car park for buses. The school also appeared empty and uninspiring, this the inevitable consequence of a new school operating under capacity.

There was some concern that children’s work was not being celebrated and used to create greater intimacy, recognition of student’s achievement and “warmth.” Significant parts of the school were desolate and unused. This said, Inspectors recognised that the original visit took place early in the school’s development – at this stage even the two swimming pools had yet to be commissioned. Inspectors also recently noted that 14 months after opening the schools’ online presence was under-leveraged.

The school’s use of Facebook, for example, a common tool for schools across the range of provision as a means to engage children and provide greater transparency for parents, prospective and existing, was not engaged. The schools web site too, a key tool for parental engagement, was found to be generally under-developed. The general sense from Inspectors at this time is of a school with very significant potential opened too early and one which would have been better advised to delay its opening by one year.

A further inspection is planned for 2016-17, but already considerable investment by school leadership is seeing step-changes in the quality of provision.  The potential for improvement is evident. We particularly applaud the launch of new scholarship programmes, something we, and our sister site whichschooladvisor, have long campaigned for.