UAE’s Best Schools announced. Top Schools Awards 2023 Finalists Revealed. Sport, Music, Academics, STEAM, Innovation, Happiness and much more.

Best School in the UAE for Bursaries, Scholarships and Care for Parents – The Finalists 2023 – 2024

“In this category of Award, we have looked at 3 areas in which schools excel:

(1) Care for families and parents;

(2) Scholarship provision; and

(3) Bursary provision

In this Category each Finalist has strength in one, or, rarely, more than one, of these areas.

First, we have looked at a broad array of issues under the heading “Care for Parents.” Examples include how well schools build engagement with parents, for example by engaging them in the whole child life aspect of school life in areas like Sport and the Performing arts; how well schools responded to the needs of families, and supported families, during Covid in a myriad of ways, including by not raising, or in exceptional cases, by actually reducing fees; the degree to which schools support parents by providing a very high level of minimum provision so that parents are only exceptionally required, for example, to invest in Shadow Teachers ; the degree to which schools consult with, engage with, and communicate with parents during periods of change – for example in cases where a school expands, opens new facilities, raises fees or even plans to move the location of schools; the degree to which schools operate a genuine open door approach in which parents feel able to visit schools and speak with school leaders and teachers about their children; the degree to which schools engage with parents in governance; the degree to which schools provide above-and-beyond responses to child need not predicted at the point a child joins the school but which are later found to be required to ensure that every child meets his or her potential during their life at school and can graduate to their chosen destination without loading parents with additional costs; how well schools balance the expectations on students and families to ensure that children have time for a family life; and, in summary, the countless number of broader investments in relationships with parents to make community at a school meaningful, and recognised as such by parents.   

 

Second, we have looked at scholarship provision. In this area we have looked at those schools who use scholarships as a tool of inclusion, rather than Marketing, and with strategic ambitions to strengthen school provision in one or more areas to the benefit of all children.

Finally, we have looked at bursary provision. Covid, and a cost-of-living crisis that has impacted on so many of us, has made the single remaining obvious gap in UAE education in matching the best of global best practice painfully obvious: bursaries. In the UK, for example, you will struggle to find a private school that does not provide a transparent, published policy on, usually means-tested, bursaries which generally come into play in situations of unanticipated, often short term, hardship faced by parents. It is hard to conceive of the worry of those families, for example, facing worries about whether their children will be turned away at the gates of a school they adore because fate, through no fault of their own, perhaps because they are facing critical illness, perhaps because of unanticipated unemployment, means that paying fees, or a level of fees, becomes impossible. In the UAE currently, very, very few schools publish any policy at all for what parents should do in these sorts of exceptional, awful circumstances when a child’s education and future is put at stake through no fault of their own because of an unforeseen change in family circumstances.  Asking for help in such circumstances, for any of us, would be difficult, not least because it would mean discussing our private affairs with schools. It is our hope that the existence of this element of the Award will begin to change mindsets so that all schools put in place a transparent published policy for bursaries that leaves no child, or parent, worrying about continuity of education if the worst should happen, or leave them feeling any sort of shame in having to ask for help. It is also a plea to parents to not cry wolf with schools. If we are to inspire schools to professionally deliver bursary provision, then that means each of us has a responsibility to never ask for assistance unless we have no other option. Bursaries are not about bargaining over fees. They are about something much more important: schools that will be there for you and your children if the unimaginable ever happens.

Each school here has achieved something beautiful and exceptional in one or more of these areas for families.  

For families, it may well be the single most important Award we present this year.”

Our Top 5 Finalists

The Top Schools Awards 2023 – 2024

Best School for Bursaries, Scholarships and Care for Parents

Dubai College – review here and here

Dubai English Speaking School and College – review here and here

GEMS Metropole School Dubai, representing GEMS Education Schools – – review here and here

Safa Schools (British and Community) – review here and here

The British School Al Khubairat – review here and here

Return to contents page: click here.

NEXT Page: Best Architecture and Design to Inspire Children in a UAE School Finalists revealed…