Top Schools Awards
Now Reading
The Top Schools Award for Best International Baccalaureate School in the United Arab Emirates. Top Schools Awards 2023 Nomination and Entry Forms.
Good for Sport
0

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

by Jon WestleyJanuary 2, 2023

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

AN IB education is seen by its proponents as the best in the world. You can read a strong argument for the strengths of the IB here by Matthew Farthing, Principal of Nord Anglia International School Dubai, in his response to those arguing for its relative weakness. You can read about how the aviation partnership with Embry-Riddel is driving the IB Career-related Programme at GEMS International School here. Together these represent the twin powerful academic and technical stream drivers of the IB in the shape of the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme and the International Baccalaureate Career-related Programme respectively. Proponents of the IB Diploma point to the unique strengths of the Diploma in empowering students with a polymath education that traverses languages, the Sciences, the Arts – the whole gamut of human experience – and then combines this academic context with an investment in the whole child, service and giving back. They also argue, with reason, that the IB was effectively created as the perfect qualification for the Capitalist system, one driven at its roots by the needs of business and industry rather than academics in ivory towers. It’s career-related Programme takes this a step further by combining the best of the IB with its heart in direct industry-related study, usually, but as above not always, rooted in British BTEC – a pathway that enables the IB to offer around 2000 different combinations of technical and vocational study to meet the different needs of children and schools.

In this award then, we are looking for a pure IB school – one deeply committed to the IB in its rich trajectory from the PYP, through MYP to post-16 study in the Diploma and/or Career-related Programme. Given our focus on excellence in STEAM this year, we are particularly focused on schools that powerfully play to the strengths of the IB – one that eschews specialisation, in favour of drawing subjects together to inspire innovation and creativity in solving problems defined by both students and society more broadly leveraging the discoveries made in each. In the best IB schools we have visited we have been struck by the powerful ways students problem-solve, drawing together their knowledge across multiple subjects to build solutions that genuinely mean something to both the students – and the broader body of knowledge and human endeavour to which they naturally contribute.

The Best IB schools too build on the heavy demands of both academic or technical pathways with an equally powerful commitment to, and focus on, child happiness, well-being and the whole child – we are looking for schools who can evidence the force for good of service and the ethical underpinnings of an IB education – and leverage these to build meaning into an education in which happiness comes in part from students knowing that they do and can make a difference in the world.

The best IB curriculum schools shine a light on what the best education in the world can be – with this focus on the bigger, whole child picture and a recognition of the importance of providing a breadth of subject knowledge to meet the broader needs of every child and a recognition of cross-curricular knowledge as the engine block of the 21st century economy and social contract.

For this Award then, we are looking for a pure IB curriculum schools that build to these strengths. We are looking for schools that celebrate IB qualifications 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.

We are particularly keen to celebrate schools that achieve graduating pathways for students in further education that include Sport and the broader Arts as well as those in STEM.

This will be an IB school that sparkles with imagination and ambition in the way it teaches the IB 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 International Baccalaureate 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 IB 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 International Baccalaureate 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 IB 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

Photograph of aspiring engineer from Amity International School in Dubai testing a Jetpack developed for the Top Schools Awards to highlight the vital importance of STEAM in education, including the IB. This image is used as part of the application for Best International Baccalaureate School in the UAE 2023 - 2024 in the Top Schools Awards

In November 2023, members of the TSA Space and Rocket programme completed first phase testing of the ImaginationTM powered 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 Wiktoria from Amity International School 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.

Further Information

For schools seeking further information on The Top Schools Awards 2023 – 2024, please contact [email protected]

Read our Guide to the Top Schools Awards 2023 – 2024 here, including details of our Awards for STEAM and Bursaries.

Read about the Top Schools Award for Fine Art and Creative Studio Work here.

Read about the Top Schools Award for Music here.

Read about the Top Schools Award for Sport here.

Read about the Top Schools Award for Environmental Science and Sustainability here.

Read about the Top Schools Award for the Best School in the UAE for “Architecture and Design to Inspire Children in a UAE School” here.

Read about the Top Schools Award for the Theatre, Dance and the Performing Arts here.

Read about the Top Schools Award for the UAE Early Years Teacher of the Year 2023-24 here.

Read about the Top Schools Award for the UAE Primary School Teacher of the Year 2023 – 2024 here.

Read about the Top Schools Award for the UAE Secondary School Teacher of the Year 2023 – 2024 here.

Read about the Top Schools Award for Best Principal in the UAE 2023- 2024 here.

Read about the Top Schools Award for Best Primary School in the UAE 2023 – 2024 here.

Read about the Top Schools Award for Best School in the UAE for Post-16 Education here.

Read about the Top Schools Award for Best School for Technical and Vocational Stream Education in the UAE, including for BTEC and/or the IB Career-related Programme.

Read about the Top Schools Award for Best School in the UAE for its Outstanding Blended Arabic-International Curriculum 2023-2024 here.

Read about the Top Schools Award for Best Indian Curriculum School in the United Arab Emirates 2023-2024 here.

Read about the Top Schools Award for Best American Curriculum School in the United Arab Emirates 2023- 2024 here.

Read about the Top Schools Award for the Best British Curriculum School in the United Arab Emirates 2023-2024 here.

Read about the Top Schools Award for Best International Baccalaureate School in the United Arab Emirates 2023-2024.

© SchoolsCompared.com. A WhichMedia Group publication. 2023. 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

Leave a Response