The Best School for STEAM [Science, Technology Engineering, The Arts and Mathematics] in the United Arab Emirates 2023 – 2024 Revealed. Top Schools Award Winner. Official.
The Winner
The SchoolsCompared.com Top Schools Awards for
The Best School for STEAM in the United Arab Emirates 2023 – 2024
is awarded to:
GEMS International School Al Khail
The STEAM Years Jet Pack Engineering Project at GEMS International School Al Khail
Web: https://www.gemsinternationalschool-alkhail.com/en
KHDA: Good with Very Good and Outstanding Features
Review: https://whichschooladvisor.com/uae/school-review/gems-international-school-al-khail
Review: https://schoolscompared.com/all-through/gems-international-school-al-khail-dubai-hills-review/
GEMS International School (GIS) opened in 2013 as the second all-through IB World School in the GEMS group with GEMS World Academy Dubai. From Day One, this was to be a GEMS powerhouse school for STEAM, one designed to set benchmarks across UAE Education.
The school has ratcheted up innovation and investment at extraordinary speed.
The first IB Diploma students graduated in May 2019.
With the school now operating to full, all-through capacity, in 2020 GEMS Education recruited globally for a Head of School to ratchet up further the depth of STEAM innovation. The engines went into overdrive.
Simon Herbert was appointed Head of School and Chief Executive Officer bringing more than three decade’s experience drawn from education postings globally. Prior to joining GEMS Mr Herbert worked as Headmaster of Dulwich College Beijing securing numerous accolades, including the International Schools Award 2019 for Creativity in Learning and being named the Hurun Education Report’s Top Ranked International School in Beijing. Previously Mr Herbert Simon was posted for 12 years at the prestigious Fettes College in Edinburgh, Scotland, first as Head of Modern Languages and then as Housemaster of Glencorse House where he introduced the IB Diploma Programme and transformed his house to best-in-college and coached the First XI Boys’ Hockey team, who went on to win the Scottish Championship. A Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a member of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference, and a member of the Council of International Schools Inspector, he has twice been elected to the Executive Committee of the British Chamber of Commerce in Beijing. Prior to his career in Education, Mr Herbert worked across advertising and marketing industries in London, represented the South of England in hockey, climbed Mount Kenya, and completed the London Marathon.
STEAM is centrifugally important in this school, both with the Diploma and arguably the most ambitious technical stream programmes in the Emirates in the form of its partnership with Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU) – one of the most prestigious and in-demand universities in the world for aviation and aeronautics.
Students at GEMS International School Al Khail studying the IB Career-related Programme (CP) can, since April 2023, access the ERAU Dual Enrolment Programme as their Career-related Study (CRS) – and secure US university credits to jump to Year 2 of their degree programme. This is the first Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in the Emirates.
GEMS International School Al Khail is the official GEMS Centres of Excellence for Aeronautics, Aviation and Space. Its unique facility gives students access to a state-of-the-art STEAM and Aviation Centre to train as pilots and for the spectrum of STEAM activities in Engineering from drone building and coding to robotics, AI and the discovery of space.
The Top Schools Award for Best School for STEAM in the United Arab Emirates 2023 – 2024 is one of our two flagship Awards for the 2023-2024 Top Schools Awards. This year all Awards were judged through the lens of STEAM, hence this year’s Awards being recognised as “The STEAM Years.”
In this Award we were looking at those schools which deliver an extraordinary and outstanding plus education for every child in Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts and Mathematics. Our focus here was especially on the role of the Arts in delivering a truly inspirational and valuable education in STEAM, hence its underlining. The Arts, of course, are so often forgotten in this mix – when the reality is that it is the Arts that fire up the engines of the greatest gifts we have as human beings – our imagination, capacity to experience the world and feel, and our problem solving; all of which find their greatest expression in the broader Arts. We specially commissioned a UK designer to produce a Jet Pack as inspiration for children across the UAE:
For this Award then we gave our schools the most extraordinary challenge: to design and engineer their own working Jet Pack leveraging their outstanding students and the teaching of departments across each school, including the Arts. The aim? To use the Jet pack to solve some fundamental problem, with the imagination to only limit on the adventure of the heart and mind each school chose to undertake. What we were seeking was a way of understanding how well schools can draw different departments together to showcase how truly outstanding schools break down the walls between subjects for their children.
The results were beautiful, visionary and quite astonishing in their ambition from all our schools, but particularly from GEMS International School Al Khail – which took our breath away.
To understand what we were looking for in an outstanding plus school for STEAM you can read our guidance here.
The Jet Pack STEAM Project at GEMS International School Al Khail
In 2023 – 2024 GEMS International Al Khail students took part in an engineering study for the creation of a Jet Pack as part of the Top Schools Awards. Their project work and manufacturing wowed our judges with its “scale of ambition, passion, demonstrative innovation in thought and knowledge.” Some of their work and prototyping is showcased below:
4 student proudly showcase their Engineering work for The STEAM Years project as part of the Top Schools Awards 2023 – 2024 at GEMS International School Al Khail. Pictured: Dhruv Agarwal, Rohan Jani, Raghavendra Sharma, Lorenzo Bettolini.
Simon Herbert, Head of School and Chief Executive Officer, GEMS International School Al Khail, told us:
“STEAM subjects play an integral part of an excellent education, and we are delighted to have given this such prominence at GIS. The world is not siloed in the same way as many schools, and a love of the arts enhances, not inhibits, one’s knowledge of STEM. The interdisciplinary nature of these subjects is pursued to the full here and allows students to see the real world links and perspective. Our Head of Arts, Mr Vikas, has ensured that STEAM subjects through integrating them into our curriculum, thereby allowing all students to benefit and flourish.”
Mr Herbert continued:
“Our Centre of Excellence in Aviation, Aeronautics and Space is testimony to our focus on the imagination and our students have taken full advantage in their project. I am delighted by the creativity of our outstanding students who have drawn from the spectrum of disciplines in Science, Technology, Engineering, The Arts and Mathematics in their landmark Project to conceive, imagine, design and manufacture a prototype aviation machine. A jetpack stirs the imagination, is exciting for both young and old students to conceive and links to our school’s study of future transport systems and sustainability. They are a credit to our school.”
TEN
NINE
EIGHT
SEVEN
SIX
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Pioneering, visionary, inspirational – and academically and technically ambitious for children, GEMS International School, Winner of The Top Schools Award for Best School for STEAM in the United Arab Emirates 2023 – 2024, represented so powerfully here by its students, sets new benchmarks for education in STEAM in the UAE.
Fasten your seatbelts
Blast the rockets
The Passengers are stepping up to fly the Jet
… and brace yourselves. There is so much more to come from this innovation-rich, hugely inspirational, absolute powerhouse GEMS Education Centre of Excellence for STEAM, Aviation and Space Technology.
Award Presentation
Best-School-for-STEAM-GEMS-International-School-Winner-Certificate
The Top Schools Award for Best School for STEAM in the United Arab Emirates 2023 – 2024 will be presented to GEMS International School Al Khail at a special Breakfast Celebration at The Emirates Golf Club on the morning of 16th November 2023. At the event the recipient of The Top Schools Awards 2023 – 2024 for Outstanding Contribution to Education will be revealed.
Historic winners of the Outstanding Contribution to Education in the UAE Award include H.E. Dr. Abdulla Al Karam, Director General of the Knowledge and Human Development Authority, recognised for his era defining leadership of Education in Dubai as a force for good; and the Varkey Family, for their instrumental role in shaping education in the UAE, and ensuring the life chances for generations of children, following the founding of GEMS Education in 1959.
Our Finalists.
Our extraordinary Finalists and those schools which have achieved outstandingly in so many ways for children in the Best School for Science, Technology, Engineering, The Arts and Mathematics category follow. Each of the following schools are recognised for their profound contribution to UAE Education in STEAM:
Dubai British School Emirates Hills
Web: https://www.dubaibritishschool.ae
KHDA: Outstanding
Review: https://whichschooladvisor.com/uae/school-review/dubai-british-school-emirates-hills
The STEAM Years Jet Pack Engineering Project at Dubai British School Emirates Hills
GEMS Our Own Indian School Dubai
Web: https://www.gemsoo-alquoz.com
KHDA: Very Good with Outstanding Features
Review: https://whichschooladvisor.com/uae/school-review/gems-our-own-indian-school
Review: https://schoolscompared.com/all-through/dubai-all-through/gems-indian-school-al-quoz-1/
The STEAM Years Jet Pack Engineering Project at GEMS Our Own Indian School Dubai:
GEMS Millennium School Sharjah
Web: https://www.gemsmillenniumschool-sharjah.com
SPEA: Outstanding
Review: https://whichschooladvisor.com/uae/school-review/gems-millennium-school-sharjah
The STEAM Years Jet Pack Engineering Project at GEMS Millennium School Sharjah:
GEMS Legacy School
Web: https://www.gemslegacyschool-dubai.com
KHDA: Good with Very Good and Outstanding Features
Review: https://whichschooladvisor.com/uae/school-review/gems-legacy-school
The STEAM Years Jet Pack Engineering Project at GEMS Legacy School
Jet Pack Rescue System by GEMS Legacy School for the Top Schools AwardsGEMS New Millennium School
Web: https://www.gemsnewmillenniumschool-alkhail.com
KHDA: Very Good with Outstanding Features
Review: https://whichschooladvisor.com/uae/school-review/gems-new-millennium-school
Review: https://schoolscompared.com/all-through/gems-new-millennium-school-al-khail-the-review-exclusive/
A final note.
The Top Schools Awards takes over a year to produce. It engages with parents, students educators and educationalists over countless months, and the work invested in these Awards is the stuff of sleepless nights and deeply felt responsibility. We produce these Awards to celebrate our amazing schools, our magnificent teachers – who are the centre of the universe, our school leaders, whose lives will be judged by their impact on children, and the amazing students that they build a future for. These Awards are only about recognising this – in a world in which our schools and educators have far, far too little recognition. If on exploring these Awards you do one single thing, it should be to reach out to each and every one and thank them for all they do, each and every one of our schools, teachers and school leaders. You have absolutely no idea how much that would mean.
© SchoolsCompared.com. A WhichMedia Group publication. 2023 – 2024. All rights reserved.
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