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

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

Top Schools Awards 2023 - Award for Best American School / Best American Curriculum School in the UAE 2023 - 2024. Main image shows a young girl and aspiring engineer from the British School of Al Khubairat engaged in testing a jet pack specially created for this years awards to highlights its focus on STEAM.

by Jon WestleyDecember 31, 2022

Below is the official entry form for the Top Schools Award in the United Arab Emirates for Best American Curriculum School 2023-24, our award recognising schools offering the most outstanding US curriculum education in the UAE, and its recognition of the many knock-on positive impacts of this on the lives of children.

Often US schools are viewed through the prism of their powerful accreditation, one which opens doors to a university education globally, and particularly in the US – but the best American education shines a light on the best available education available in any school in and of itself, with particular strengths in the development of the whole child. In the mainstream its approach is arguably very different to its British, IB and other global curricular counterparts in this focus on the bigger picture in education which places at its heart the High School Diploma, a qualification designed to give time to the much broader and equally weighted broader studies and educational experience available to children in US schools. In the best US schools you will, as a result, see much more time given to the exploration of Sport, Theatre, the broader Performing and Musical Arts, fine Art – and the spectrum of subjects that give our lives meaning and purpose.

This is not to say that US schools are not academic – one of their strengths is the focus on the individual child. If an academic child wants to pursue a depth of academic subject as weighty as A Levels or Diploma subjects they can through Advanced Placement; university level courses available in 38 subjects stretching from Calculus, Physics and Chemistry to Art History, Psychology and Macro Economics. Today too we see a growing number of US schools offering a blend of options with international curricular including the IB Diploma. The point, however, is that it is the High School Diploma that remains at the heart of all US schools – because of its inherent nod to the space it opens up for a bigger picture whole child education. When other international curricular schools find themselves struggling to give space to programmes that teachers know are important in the whole child space, the US schools already have this.

The best US curriculum schools then shine a light on what the best education in the world can be – but with this focus on the bigger, whole child picture.

For this Award then, we are looking for American curriculum schools that build to these strengths. We are looking for schools that celebrate the High School Diploma as a gateway to to this much more profound, bigger picture delivery of a whole child education that leaves young men and women leaving school with a holistic education built on their individual needs, ambitions and gifts, and one celebrating the many ways we all live our lives beyond books.

This is why in this Award we are looking for American curriculum schools that offer a broad range of subject choices and qualification pathways for children, and a whole child, rounded, ethically rich and creative problem-solving curriculum that brings to life the important contribution we all make in our lives outside employment and study. We are particularly keen to celebrate schools that achieve graduating pathways for students in further education that include Sport and the broader Arts.

This will be an American school that sparkles with imagination and ambition in the way it teaches the US Curriculum for all their students, one with a warmth that engenders the passion of teachers and the adoration of children and parents alike. And, finally, it will be a school that ensures that every graduating student can speak with others with knowledge and passion about a breadth of subjects and interests when they leave the school to start the next chapter of their lives, each empowered with the values and confidence to make a positive, personal impact in the world before them.

For Schools

The Top Schools Award for Best American Curriculum School 2023-24 – schools please download the official application form here.

For Parents, Governors, Teachers and Students

Parents, teachers, governors and students – we want to hear from you! If you believe that the American curriculum education offered by your school is outstanding – and one which has made a profoundly positive and inspirational impact on its children, please contact us with your answer to the following. “I would like to nominate X school [name of school] as the best American curriculum school in the UAE 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 school’s investment in teaching the US curriculum has had on you and/or children 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.

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

Top Schools Awards 2023. Best American School / Best American Curriculum School highlighting the best US education in the UAE.

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, Space Girl and aspiring young engineer Tilda from The British School Al Khubairat in Abu Dhabi (pictured) for her considerable, and quite, totally, awesome, bravery and kindness in completing rocket pack inaugural flight testing.

Without her, and those many other children we visited across the UAE, none of this would have been possible. They made us… believe.