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The Top Schools Award for Best New School in the United Arab Emirates opened between 2018 and 2023. Top Schools Awards 2023 Nomination and Entry Forms.

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The Top Schools Award for Best New School in the United Arab Emirates opened between 2018 and 2023. Top Schools Awards 2023 Nomination and Entry Forms.

Top Schools Awards 2023. Award for Best New School in the UAE 2018 - 2023. Image shows a young student and aspiring engineer testing a Jet Pack as part of the Top Schools Awards and its focus on recognising the importance of STEAM in education

by Jon WestleyJanuary 5, 2023

Below is the official entry form for the Top Schools Award for Best New School in the United Arab Emirates. This Award is for schools that opened during the period between August 2018 and September 2022. Whilst we will be reviewing all schools that opened in the UAE during this period, it is likely, though not an absolute, that only schools that have secured at least one inspection and completed their all-through opening will be successful in our final shortlisting for Judges.

This Award recognises those new schools that have opened in the UAE since 2018 that offer an outstanding education for students and sparkle with their contribution to education in the region.

Opening a new school anywhere in the world takes no small amount of courage. Arguably this is particularly true in a region in which the quality of education provided by our schools, one driven by some of the most demanding school regulators in the world, is of a standard that is competitive globally – and indeed betters the education the majority of students could achieve at home/overseas. This is true across curricular, but each share USPs precisely because of the cultural context, one rich in its meeting point of East and West, in which they operate. That courage holds true whether the opening of a school is a branded one or home grown, whether its ownership is driven by a larger established group of schools or a small independent. You have to believe in education, want to make a positive difference in the lives of children, and believe in the UAE and its capacity to make a difference in the world, to make the leap.

School openings since 2018 in the UAE arguably represent the golden years of school openings in the region. The number, mixture and extraordinary quality of school openings has arguably never been bettered – so this is an especially difficult award this year. This award holds the stories of schools that have demonstrated ambition, resilience, imagination, passion, entrepreneurship, belief, commitment, conviction… and they deserve to have those stories told because they have resulted in schools that do the most important thing of all: deliver the absolute best education possible for our children.

New school openings depend on any number of hugely complex achievements over time. They stretch from architecture, finance and talent acquisition to pioneering founding school leadership, teachers that have a role in defining the success of a school that is exciting as much as it is the stuff of sleepless nights – and hugely supportive parents and students that themselves play a vital role in defining a school, its culture – and its future. To end this process with an outstanding school for children is above and beyond an outstanding achievement.

In this award then, we are looking for a new school that has “gone the distance” and set the region alight with the quality of its provision for children across every aspect of its provision. It will have a story to tell of its journey – and be hugely ambitious for its future and that of every one of its students. It will be a school that is loved by its students, parents, teachers, school leaders and owners alike – it will be a school that makes each of them proud.

Given our focus on excellence in STEAM this year, we are particularly focused on schools that powerfully play to the strengths of the Arts in STEM – one that celebrates the way that subject areas relate together to inspire innovation and creativity in solving problems defined by both students and society more broadly.

The best new schools shine a light on what the best education in the world can be, must be – with a focus on the bigger, whole child picture of education, a recognition of the importance of providing a breadth of subject knowledge to meet the broader needs of every child, a profound recognition of the importance of happiness and wellbeing in education – 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 new schools that build to all these strengths. We are looking for schools that celebrate their contribution to education in the UAE as one driven through the needs of each individual child, one that strives to ensure that every young man and woman leaves their 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 in living a good and meaningful life.

This will be a new school that sparkles with imagination and ambition in the way it teaches children, 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 New School in the United Arab Emirates opened in the period 2018-2023 – 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 education offered by your new school, one that has opened since August 2018, 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 new 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 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

Best new school in the UAE. Image shows a young female student from GEMS Dubai American Academy testing a Jet Pack developed for the Awards to showcase the value of the Arts in STEM within schools.

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 Naisha from GEMS Dubai American Academy(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.