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The Top Schools Award for Best Principal in the United Arab Emirates. Top Schools Awards 2023 Nomination and Entry Forms.

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The Top Schools Award for Best Principal in the United Arab Emirates. Top Schools Awards 2023 Nomination and Entry Forms.

Top Schools Awards 2023. Best Principal in the UAE.

by Jon WestleyDecember 14, 2022

Below is the official entry form for the Top Schools Award for Best Principal in the United Arab Emirates 2023-24, our award recognising the most extraordinary, exceptional and beyond-outstanding school leadership of a school and its positive impact on the lives of children and young men and women.

This award recognises a role that is so often overlooked in education. Many just expect those leading a school to be outstanding; there is an expectation that it comes with the territory and is to be expected… something that just “happens.” It almost invariably doesn’t. The role is complex, and the often different, in many cases competing demands of stakeholders, mean that Heads, daily, have to navigate choppy waters. Keeping the needs of children centre stage in this is almost never easy – it needs someone with steadfast principles, vocation, a steadfast belief in the power of education as a force for good – and the ability to put other before self when it is hardest to do so. It also often means living within budgets that mean hard choices have to be made, those that win almost no friends.

Often characterised as reserved and set apart from the life of a school, the most outstanding Heads in our experience are those that are, in distinction, never locked within ivory towers but, instead, immersed in the life of a school and adored by children. It is as if they see what can never be written, and is almost never recognised or understood – that their biggest supporter is the one who sits at the very top of a school fighting their cause daily.

The role is invariably quite exhausting – but never thankless because of this fundamental link between the needs of children for someone able to fight their cause – and the potential of school leaders to change the life chances of every child, in every loaded decision. To do this they must, sometimes only eventually after hard and long battles that would lead the best of us to simply ‘walk’, bring a school with them – parents, owners, governors, bankers, teachers, contractors, society, their peers, students, media and regulators. They must set the ethical framework of a school and the values that will come to define the ways its graduating students will perceive and relate to the world. A school, after all, is not just a building that is housed within the markers of its grounds – but something with impacts and importance extending across a whole society today – and into the future before it.

For this Award, we are looking then for someone whose mark on the UAE has depth, significance and whose impact goes above and beyond in creating opportunities for children and young men and women. We want to celebrate, through them, the vital role of all school leaders in the UAE and their collective impact on the future of a nation and its people, and the students that will eventually graduate to define our collective future and a better world.

For Schools

The Top Schools Award for Best Principal in the United Arab Emirates 2023-24 – Principals and Heads please download application here.

For Parents, Governors, Teachers and Students

Parents, teachers, governors and students – we want to hear from you! If you believe that your school is being led by an extraordinary and outstanding Principal or Head who has made a profoundly positive and inspirational impact on you, your school and your child(ren), please contact us with your answer to the following. “I would like to nominate [name of Principal], at X school [name of school] because …. ” Please email us at [email protected]. You can write as little or as much as you wish, and please include photographs if possible. Please give do your best to bring to life for us the impact the Principal has had on your school, child(ren) and/or you in your email.

The Top Schools Awards 2023-24

Top Schools Awards 2023 The STEAM Years

This year, the Top Schools Awards are celebrating outstanding achievement in our schools with a particular focus on how schools inspire children by linking all subject areas to bring the extraordinary wonders of the Arts, creativity, imagination – and freedom to experiment and innovate, into all areas of the curriculum including, Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.[/caption]

We believe, passionately, that the Arts are absolutely fundamental to delivering an outstanding education for every child, one focused on the whole child and the gifts all children have to change the world for the better and make the difference – every day, and in the future. The Arts bring STEM to life.

Rocket Girl – the Arts and Sciences, together, brought to life

Photograph of a child at Safa Community School in Dubai wearing a Jet pack as part of first phase flight testing for the Top Schools Awards 2023. This image is used as part of the application process for the Awarding of Best Principal in the UAE for the most outstanding leadership of a school.

In November 2023, members of the TSA Space and Rocket programme completed first phase testing of the Imagination^TMpowered Jet Pack specially manufactured for this year’s STEAM focused Awards. We visited a number of the region’s most outstanding schools. We are particularly grateful for the assistance of the extraordinary and accredited Rocket Pilot and Space Girl Lottie from Safa Community School(pictured) for her considerable, and quite, totally, awesome, bravery and kindness in completing Year 6 rocket pack inaugural flight testing.