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Victory Heights Primary School Foundation. First New Sister School to Award-Winning Victory Heights Primary School in Dubai.
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BSO Outstanding Victory Heights Primary School Dubai 2022 - 2025

World Exclusive. The award-winning, KHDA rated “Very Good with Outstanding Features” Victory Heights Primary School has today announced it will launch a new “Victory Heights Foundation Stage” in August 2021 in Dubai Sports City.

The move will see a purpose-built new school site and buildings for Victory Heights Foundation Stage 1 and Foundation Stage 2 children and, in its highly specialised focus exclusively on the very youngest children, will enable very young children to develop their education away from the “madding crowds” of children in later years.

The new model of education being pioneered by Victory Heights mirrors the new focus of the KHDA, Dubai’s schools’ regulator, on Early Childhood and supporting schools and Centres specialising in educating Dubai’s very youngest children.

The decision by Victory Heights to invest in a school focused only on FS1 and FS2 children is a direct and radical move away from the approach increasingly adopted by Dubai’s schools to absorb younger children into giant all-through schools where the education of the very youngest children has to take place with much older children, this with the perceived risk felt by many parents that childhood is, as a result, less able to be protected and nurtured. Victory Heights goes, too, even further than the top current Primary schools in Dubai, by recognising that the very youngest children have unique needs that are best served by giving them their own complete school, together with specialist teaching faculty and a unique Early Years environment away from the very different demands and needs of children in Years 1 – 6.

The new school will operate, in practice, as the early Years’ FS campus of its founding Victory Heights Primary school, with a shuttle bus facility for older siblings between the two schools.

The Victory Heights Foundation Stage school will open in August 2021 in Al Fay Road, Dubai Sports City – a location chosen for its easy accessibility from both its founding Victory Heights Primary School and families based across Sports City, Jumeirah Golf Estates, Victory Heights, IMPZ, Jumeirah Village Triangle, Jumeirah Village Circle, Hessa Street, Al Khail Street,  and the broader Dubai community of parents seeking an FS exclusive education with the benefits of a guaranteed slipstream to one of Dubai’s top, and most loved, Primary schools.

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Very close links will be maintained between faculty at both schools – and Sasha Crabb, winner of the SchoolsCompared.com Top Schools Award for Best Principal in the UAE, together with her Deputy, Ben Rothwell, will maintain responsibility across both flagship schools.

Map showing directions to, and location of, Victory Heights Foundation Stage School and Victory Heights Primary School in Dubai

News of the new Victory Heights Foundation Stage school is being released today to parents of children currently at Victory Heights Primary School.

 

New Investment and Features

Learning resources at Victory Heights Foundation school opening in Dubai in August 2021 for FS1 and FS2 children who will move acros from its founding Victory Heights Primary School

 

Head of VHFS

Hannah Hepworth, Headteacher of the Victory Heights Foundation Stage, school told us:

“Every detail has been considered to ensure that we continue to offer an ‘Outstanding’ experience for our foundation stage children.

We have paid particular attention to learning environments, ensuring that every one of our classrooms has direct access to dedicated outdoor learning spaces for children.”

Hannah Hepworth. Head. Victory Heights Foundation Stage school. 

Ms Hepworth graduated from De Montfort University with a B.Ed. in Primary Education. She taught in two schools in the UK for 9 years  focused on the Early Years. She then moved to Abu Dhabi to work at Brighton College where she become Head of Year for FS2. Hannah has been at Victory Heights for four years, managing Early Years and  the crucial transition between FS2 and KS1. Hannah has a passion self-initiated learning through play but also ensuring all children individual needs are met, ‘no lids on learning’.

 

School Links

The promise of the new school is that the values and ethics of the founding Victory Heights Primary School will be maintained. “The Happy School dynamic – and the unique Victory Heights focus on the academic and whole child development of every child, is built into the DNA of our new school – but with even more concentration on the needs of our youngest children who now have their very own school…” we were told today.

Sasha Crabb, Principal of both Victory Heights Primary School and Victory Heights Foundation Stage school, told us:

“Due to the phenomenal growth and success of Victory Heights Primary School, we continue to experience a huge admissions demand from parents within the large communities that the school serves.

To support our long term vision, and to provide the best possible learning environment for all of our pupils, we have now invested in an absolutely state-of-the art facility focused exclusively on the very youngest children in our Victory Heights family of outstanding schools.”

Sasha Crabb. Principal. Victory Heights Primary School and Victory Heights Foundation school.

 

Facilities and features

The new Victory Heights Foundation Stage school incorporates:

  • 11 natural light-flooded classrooms, each with inspirational outdoor discovery and learning spaces;

Natural light flooded classrooms are a striking feature of the new Victory Heights Foundation Stage school opening in Dubai in August 2021

  • New teaching faculty, including recruitment of a dedicated Deputy Head of Foundation Stage responsible for leading curriculum development;
  • New year leaders and class teachers, supported by current faculty brought across to the new Foundation Stage from Victory Heights Primary school;
  • Landmark, modern, intimate single story architectural design designed, developed around a design brief to inspire child happiness, academic attainment and community cohesion;
  • Outdoor play, learning, performance and discovery spaces;

Architectural render of the new Discover and Play Outdoor spaces at Victory Heights Foundation Stage school in Dubai, the sister FS school to Victory Heights Primary School.

  • Dedicated foundation stage multi-purpose hall;
  • Experiential learning ‘pods’;
  • Fully-staffed school clinic;
  • Shared swimming facilities based at Victory Heights Primary School.

 

Small-school dynamics

The new school has a capacity of just 275 children, a critical element in protecting the “small=scale, happy, community school dynamics so important to parents at its founding Victory Heights Primary School”, and the commitment to investment in outstanding teaching faculty across both schools remains constant:

“Our school vision is to ‘Nurture, Challenge and Excel’ and we will never compromise on that. We want all members of our school community to feel that they are a valued member of that community and the dedicated Victory Heights Foundation Stage building serves to further develop this feeling, acting as a ‘small school within a school.

Victory Heights Foundation Stage will continue to be staffed by long-serving, highly qualified, British trained teaching staff.

To further support the transition to a new site, a new role of ‘Deputy Head of Foundation’ has been created, to support the new Principal of Victory Heights Foundation Stage school.

Additionally, new middle leadership roles have been created in Mathematics and English, these to further enhance the academic provision in the Early Years and the transition to KS1.

Specialist teachers of music, Arabic, Islamic and PE will continue to enrich the curriculum.

Sasha Crabb. Executive Principal. Victory Heights Primary School and Victory Heights Foundation school. 

Breakout spaces open out from classrooms for child learning at the new Victory Heights Foundation Stage school in Dubai

Inclusion Champion, Michelle Choytooa, and Assistant Headteachers, Alex Quinn and Rob McCall, will work across both schools, alongside the dedicated Foundation Stage leadership team.

 

Full review

Our full review of Victory Heights Primary School, a school we rate as outstanding-plus, can be found here. and the school’s video prospectus here.

First with the Education Stories that Matter to ParentsTM

© SchoolsCompared.com. A WhichMedia Company publication. 2022. All rights reserved

 

About The Author
Jon Westley
Jon Westley is the Editor of SchoolsCompared.com and WhichSchoolAdvisor.com UK. You can email him at jonathanwestley [at] schoolscompared.com

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