The Happiest School for Children in the United Arab Emirates 2023 – 2024 Revealed. Top Schools Award Winner. Official.
The Winner
The SchoolsCompared.com Top Schools Awards for
The Happiest School for Children in the United Arab Emirates 2023 – 2024
is awarded to:
Safa Community School Dubai
Our view of Safa Community School
Web: https://www.safacommunityschool.com
KHDA: Very Good with Predominant Outstanding Features
Review: https://whichschooladvisor.com/uae/school-review/safa-community-school
Review: https://schoolscompared.com/new-schools-in-uae/safa-community-school-dubai-al-barsha-south/
We have reviewed this beyond-outstanding landmark British curriculum school throughout its life since being founded in 2014. Safa Community School was awarded The Top Schools Award for Best New School in the United Arab Emirates in 2019-20, a hugely creditable achievement given a competitive landscape then including some of the crown jewels in UAE education today.
Since launch this school has set quite exceptional benchmarks for its provision – and underlying every single one of them is its unique culture of child happiness that defines this school today across every single aspect of its provision.
This school was designed at the outset around the happiness of children and today it ranks as the most profound example of what a school, built ground up around the welfare, wellbeing and happiness of each child individually, can achieve academically, ethically, and whole child.
And what this school achieves for children defines Safa Community School as one of the most outstanding British curriculum schools, not only in Dubai, but the Emirates.
It’s relatively easy to define what outstanding wellbeing means in a school. Ultimately it is a set of processes that, although often difficult, outstanding schools can achieve through policies, systems and determination. Happiness, the happiness of children, is altogether different. You cannot learn how to create a happy school for children in books – it is not something that schools can just manufacture.
Defining exactly how Safa Community achieves what it does for children, and its families and wider community, ultimately comes down to a vast mix of those things that go into making an outstanding school working together to create what is so often in most schools simply unobtainable.
It’s magical.
Even one of the most recognised, and considered most Outstanding schools in the Emirates, one of those rare schools in the UAE with a genuinely global reputation and impact, struggles with happiness. It does so, not because it does not want its children to be happy, but because the particular way the school works, and despite throwing the book at trying to create it, it is just not one of the school’s qualities. It has many others in abundance, many deserving of near infinite admiration, but the happiness of its children remains out of reach.
So let us jump in to why Safa Community School is deserving of so many accolades. The first thing to hit you when visiting Safa Community school, and like a freight train, is the sense of joy.
It’s tangible.
The school is divided into two. The Primary and Middle School first, and then a staggering new, independently situated, purpose built, landmark GCSE and Sixth Form Centre in the shape of Safa College.
The heart of the school, the one which welcomes children from the youngest age and takes them through to Year 9 is so beautiful.
Words fail us.
Its not just the design and facility provision. The school is designed with a nautical nod to a ship, almost an Ark, setting out, then finding its way across the grand oceans of knowledge with all their stormy seas of the unknown.
Children are surrounded on their voyage by everything for their journey they could possible need or yearn for, from the most beautiful gardens (this is a school that blends wonderfully with its setting as if it has been here for a thousand years) to every conceivable tool to make their journey inspiring and exciting. All the while the care here for them on their journey by teachers, across the wild seas, has such depth, driven by quite remarkable, humbling and visionary school leadership in the shape of its Founders and school Principal.
Teachers are chosen for a rare mix of qualities that begin with their Humanity and commitment to a life of service for children.
There is not a teacher at Safa Community School that is not here for the journey across the seas of learning and to make a difference. And the children join each of them with a passion….
O it’s I that am the captain of a tidy little ship,
Of a ship that goes a sailing on the pond;
And my ship it keeps a-turning all around and all about;
But when I’m a little older, I shall find the secret out
How to send my vessel sailing on beyond.
For I mean to grow as little as the dolly at the helm,
And the dolly I intend to come alive;
And with him beside to help me, it’s a-sailing I shall go,
It’s a-sailing on the water, when the jolly breezes blow
And the vessel goes a divie-divie-dive.
O it’s then you’ll see me sailing through the rushes and the reeds,
And you’ll hear the water singing at the prow;
For beside the dolly sailor, I’m to voyage and explore,
To land upon the island where no dolly was before,
And to fire the penny cannon in the bow.
My Ship and I. Robert Louis Stephenson. A Child’s Garden of Verses.
As we were told on one visit, Safa Community School saved one teacher from abandoning the profession altogether after their experience in another school. Safa Community gave them back a belief in the importance of education, inspiring within them all the love of teaching and care for children that had drawn them into teaching so many years ago.
Over the last five years, staff retention at Safa Community School is 96% – off the scale compared with almost every other school we have visited. The Founders of the Safa Schools can be found here too. They are not like other Founders who you will only hear of as a footnote to corporate reports somewhere. This is their life’s work, their mission. Their children have been educated here, made it their home.
How do you understand the off-the-scale happiness of children at Safa Community School? One way, one of the most important, is to look at the progress that children make at this school in their learning. This is a genuinely inclusive school with a welcome to all children as big as its heart. It does not shy away from the ethics of a universal education as so many do to prop up their results. It does not need to. Children excel in value-added from their baselines in joining the school. Individually, each child that joins this Safa Community School has their own individualised learning journey as they grow in intellect, in ethics and into their young adulthood. This is the School that achieved, after all, the Highest Award for Value Add and Child Progress at The Top Schools Awards in 2021-22.
The Top Schools Award for the Happiness of Children is the Award every school covets. It reflects more powerfully than any other how well a school really educates children – and gives them school days that really will be the best of their lives. Too many schools take each child’s predicted grade on joining their school as the level of their commitment. Safa Community School takes those predicted grades and reaches for the stars.
To achieve this level of child progress requires a school to have beyond-outstanding teachers, beyond-outstanding school leadership, a commitment to leaving no child behind whatever the cost – and the magical heaven-sent ability to make each child happy. Children that are unhappy in school are, we believe, failed by schools. How can any child meet their potential and gifts as a human being unless their education is made an experience that they embrace? Here children long to come to school.
An exceptional 93% of Safa Community School parents according to EDSTATICATM , the UAE’s independent Education sector data metrics specialists, recommend their school to other parents. This is significantly above the average for schools in the UAE (82%) and the average for Dubai schools (84%). Again, more than 90% of parents are delighted by the academic performance of their children set against an average across other schools of less than 80%. Half of parents told EDSTATICATM that their child’s confidence had been transformed at Safa Community School.
Allowing for the natural confidence of many children, this is as near a perfect score as has ever been achieved by any school.
For student and teacher happiness the school ranks top in the Emirates. Bullying at Safa Community School is statistically non-existent, almost incomparably so. When asked if the school actually listened to them, more that twice the number of students than any other school responded positively.
Feedback to SchoolsCompared has been unambiguously positive. To give some basic context to what is being achieved here in child happiness, the Tier 1 premium KHDA Outstanding school with which Safa Community school is most often compared achieved more than 23% of parents less than Safa Community School in believing that their children were “tremendously happy” at school.
Astonishingly 100% of parents informed EDSTATICATM that their children wanted to go to school every day – that nothing would keep them away.
It does not get better than this.
These finding are supported by the latest Safa Community School Parent’s Survey:
We love the map of happiness the school uses to explain how it all works, building on the theme of the ship:
Countless initiatives plug into this including:
Whilst for family welfare reasons we have chosen not to publish details, we know the school invests very significantly in scholarships and other support for families, including those who are most vulnerable. If you are going to measure how a big a school’s heart really is, how real its commitment is to leaving no child behind, it is so telling when schools walk the walk. Too many don’t.
The whole child life of Safa Community School is a lesson in excitement. There are more than THREE HUNDRED ECAs at the school, all without extra cost. The school has quite the most inspiring life-affirming programmes for its children inside and outside school. They cover everything from Yoga, robotics and countless sports, to Music, Writing and building cars. Being the happiest school for children matters here so much…
Safa College, to which students graduate in Year 10 until they graduate Sixth Form, is unique in the Emirates, architecturally stunning and the most inspiring pre-university development we have seen in our many years visiting schools.
It is hard to describe and capture – but it is like walking into the future, as you are surrounded by workshops and facilities exploring everything from electric battery production to building cars.
The Design Department at Safa College on our last visit was producing furniture so technically clever and beautiful we wanted to take it home with us.
We can also exclusively reveal that The Design Department at Safa College been entrusted with building the flying sleigh for a very important traveller who visits all the world’s children in December following a special commission from a major global organisation with secret headquarters in both the North Pole and Lapland. This will be the first time in history that the flying sleigh has not been built by elves.
Facilities are numerous and of quite exceptional quality:
This can only ever be a sketch and outline of arguably the most perfect example of a happy school in the Emirates.
Safa Community School in Dubai is the school that we would have loved to have gone to as children, and if we could go back in time this would be our home.
This is, beyond peradventure, the happiest school for children in the United Arab Emirates – and just perhaps, the world.
We think there is no more important an Award than this because we reject all forms of education built on anything else than the care of children and ensuring their happiness.
These should be the happiest days of our children’s lives. These should be the days where our children find themselves and develop to their best, academically and whole child, in a safe environment where those in loco parentis believe in them, believe that they can do anything they set their minds and hearts on – and always catches them when they fall.
Yes. This is Safa Community School Dubai to its heart – quite possibly the most beautiful school for children in the UAE, and certainly its very, very, very happiest.
Award Presentation
Happiest-School-Safa-Community-School-Top-Schools-Awards-Winner-Certificate
The Top Schools Award for Happiest School in the United Arab Emirates 2023 – 2024 will be presented to Safa Community School Dubai 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 Happiest School category follow. Each of the following schools are recognised for their profound contribution to the Happiness of Children in UAE Education:
Arcadia School
Web: https://www.hartlandinternational.com
KHDA: Very Good with Outstanding Features
Review: https://schoolscompared.com/new-schools-in-uae/arcadia-preparatory-school-jumeirah-village-triangle/
Review: https://whichschooladvisor.com/uae/school-review/arcadia-school
Hartland International School
Web: https://www.hartlandinternational.com
KHDA: Very Good with Outstanding Features
Review: https://whichschooladvisor.com/uae/school-review/hartland-international-school/
Horizon English School
Web: https://horizonschooldubai.com
KHDA: Outstanding
Review: https://schoolscompared.com/primary-schools/horizon-school-al-safa-jumeirah/
Review: https://whichschooladvisor.com/uae/school-review/horizon-english-school-dubai
Raffles International School Dubai
Web: https://www.rafflesis.com
KHDA: Very Good with Outstanding Features
Review: https://schoolscompared.com/uncategorized/raffles-international-school-umm-suqeim-the-review/
Review: https://whichschooladvisor.com/uae/school-review/raffles-international-school
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.
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