Best New School – The Finalists 2023 – 2024
The following schools are our top-5 schools and Finalists for the 2023 – 2024 SchoolsCompared.com Best New School Award for their academic and whole child education of children in the UAE.
All the schools listed, in different ways, provide outstanding breadth of academic, technical and ECA options for students to ensure that every child can meet his or her individual ambitions, potential, and ability.
Each of them endeavours to provide added value to each child’s journey to ensure that every student leaves school meeting or exceeding baseline academic and whole child expectations. Some new schools here have designed their buildings and infrastructure ground-up to meet the needs of the 21st century child, courageously re-writing the historic rule book of what makes a good school. Others have upped the bar in re-defining what parents and children can expect at a price point – democratising an outstanding education by making it available to many more families. Each of them shines in very different ways – but they all share in being outstanding, at their particular phase of development, for the children under their care.
When we have looked at new schools, we have weighted those that plough back investment into facilities, teacher salaries, resources and school improvements year-on-year to improve education for children. We have looked in particular at how new schools have phased their launch, and for more established new schools how successful they have been in meeting their published plans – and how well they have adapted to the needs and potential of their actual intake in practice.
All of the schools shortlisted endeavour to deliver a benchmark for the best education for children, available in the UAE, building on the benchmarks set by established schools and seeking to meet and improve on them.
Finally, we have looked across all areas of provision, investment, innovation and achievement that support each school being shortlisted.
It is true of all our Awards, but in this category above others, there is something quite extraordinarily inspiring about seeing schools comparatively in a way that they cannot. As they each rush in their missions to deliver for children, we look across the sector, seeing moments of magic, achievements and innovations that they are often blind to – but which absolutely do deserve to be recognised and celebrated.
You can read what we have looked for in delivering an outstanding new school in the Emirates here.
Our Top 5 Finalists
The Top Schools Awards 2023 – 2024
Bloom World Academy
Where to begin on one of the most extraordinary, special, unique and utterly phenomenal school launches in the Emirates in recent memory. The first progressive IB World School in the UAE; this is a school designed from scratch by one of the emirates most respected educators to build the perfect school, 360 degrees, without any compromise. This is a school bursting with whole child investment in the Performing Arts, Music and any number of child-chosen ECAs to inspire every possible student passion, one with all the backing of Bloom Education, best known for delivering Brighton Colleges across the UAE, in their first landmark school to carry their name and reputation – one building in everything they have learned about how to deliver an outstanding education for children. Here you find teaching faculty that stand out for their being conviction educationalists, each pioneering an education built on the happiness of children, care for families, and outstanding, individualised education in equal measure. It’s on this note, the delivery of a deeply individualised education, that Bloom re-writes the rulebook on what is possible. Other schools often speak of an individualised education, but the reality of actually doing this is almost impossible to achieve in practice without the scale of investment and radical restructuring of accepted ways of doing things, that we see so beautifully implemented here. Facilities are Tier 1 plus, with a campus co-shared with the Flagship Brighton College Dubai. Telling is that it’s a school too which is grabbing the attention of parents historically set on a British Education to gold standard A level and now because of Bloom moving to the IB, not least because of a timetabling that works for every family and every child on their own terms. Later provision is written in stone too from launch, with promised commitment to the IB Diploma, (the fabulous) IB technical stream Career-related Programme and numerous other qualification pathways to meet every single possible child need including ASDAN. This is a forever school – and one of the happiest we have encountered in our many years of reporting on UAE Education.”
Bloom World Academy – review here and here
Brighton College Dubai
“Perhaps the most perfectly executed of all big-brand British public school “names” in the UAE, Brighton Colleges, one and all, have earned the respect and adoration of peer schools and families respectively. Brighton College Dubai came latest to the UAE, and builds on every single one of the across-the-board outstanding strengths of its sister schools in Al Ain and Abu Dhabi – and then adds its own twists on how to deliver a world class British Education in the UAE. Of all the UK brands – and the competition is beyond intense here, particularly from the outstanding Royal Grammar School Dubai, Brighton’s is the most proven, with links with the home UK school meaningful, omnipresent and respectful. This is absolutely not one of those schools that buys a brand off the shelf and delivers nothing else. Academic and whole child engagement and achievement are off-the-scale; leadership serious, weighted with responsibility and exceptionally high performing; teaching faculty expensively recruited, and outstanding; – and the children carry themselves with a way of looking at the world that leaves you knowing at once this is a “Brighton child.” Putting aside all the benefits of alumni and brand, in its own right the education is formidable, driven by arguably the most three important pillars you can imagine to aspire to for our children: confidence, kindness and curiosity. Those three drivers of learning, through which a Brighton education is delivered and structured, build humanity, engagement, a love of learning and a powerful sense of responsibility in every Brighton child that they can change the world for the better – and must do so. The end result is a land of opportunity for children, one filled to the rafters with ambition, compassion, humanity and hope, and one with every single ounce of academic achievement that parents could wish for their children.”
Brighton College Dubai – review here and here
South View School
School leadership makes or breaks a school – and it is here that South View has found one of the most inspirational leaders we have met in our many journeys traversing the very best schools across the Emirates. Extraordinarily humble, leadership here shines in no small part because it listens. There is far too little listening, and far too much imposing, that goes on in this world. Only by listening, do any of us understand what is happening outside our heads and prejudices. Beyond the listening, the leadership here is driving an extraordinarily impactful and hope-filled investment in child welfare, whole child and academic education. British values, those of compassion, not walking by on the other side, and always rooting for the underdog, are deeply woven into the cultural fabric of school life, one that is richly and celebratory of its international role and formidably, and creditably, inclusive. Do not expect the bells and whistles – that is resolutely not what South View is about. Instead the focus is on inclusion, this stretching to pioneer an outstanding education, as far as it possibly can, that is affordable to the broadest number of families. Revenue is invested in securing the very highest calibre of teaching faculty – if you are not a highly skilled conviction educationalist driven to create a better world for children you do not make it through the door. This is one of many areas where the school refuses compromise. In child happiness and welfare, this is a beacon school – it matters here – and matters personally to the school leadership. There is a belief and guiding philosophy that underpins everything here that starts from an understanding and mission that only happy children can have the freedom to adventure in their learning take risks; innovate; share; and, think bigger than has ever been thought before. Each and every South View child is part of a family in which mistakes are treated as a fundamental part of learning of how to become who we are are – and be better than we are, rather than ever being treated as some kind of failure. The personality of each child is celebrated, not crushed into boxes. There is no factory line education here. This is an absolutely beautiful and high achieving school for its children, one with a heart every bit as big as its ambition to be the best school for children in the emirates.”
South View School – review here and here
The Arbor School
“We can think of no school that has done more to change the structural landscape and push the boundaries of formulaic education, than Arbor School Dubai. We have journeyed with this remarkable school since its very earliest conception, and watched as the school has evolved to take up its place today as one of the schools that puts Dubai on the map globally for the quality and innovation of its education sector. To understand the ambition and seriousness of the Arbor vision, you have to understand a back story of a school invented by conviction educators and environmentalists recognising a yawning gap between the reality of a world burning its future in short term decision making (generally for profit) and a future generation that will have to pick up the pieces; solve hugely complex issues traversing technology, ethics and environmental Science; and, build a future that is sustainable and protective of all that is the best of and in our humanity. If you get the chance to speak with the founders of the school, you should. The vision here is complex, ambitious and profound. Beyond this, this is a school that simply “wows!” at every step. Vast biodomes define the skyline and heart of the school, whilst bringing an understanding of, and appreciation for, the complexity and beauty of an environment for students which builds an enviable sense of shared purpose and values that is both deeply moving, and one that drives the pervasive happiness of children. There is something substantial here to build an outstanding education on – something made real in the school to startling effect and impact. Few schools have anything that comes close to an equivalent driver of shared culture, and visionary intent. School leadership and teaching faculty are hugely inspirational as you would expect from a school on a mission – a real mission with consequences and opportunities so visible and pressing. Make no mistake too, the opportunities for students who graduate from Arbor will be many and demand for them high. These are students primed and ready for universities and industry… and universities and industries that needed them – yesterday.”
The Arbor School – review here and here
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Wow.. Congrats to all winners. In my opinion, American Gulf School in Sharjah is also suitable to be in the first top American schools. https://www.ags.ae/en