Best British School – The Finalists 2023 – 2024
The following schools are finalists in the 2023 – 2024 SchoolsCompared.com Best British 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 (where appropriate to their students) 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. Where we have reviewed wholly or partially academically selective schools, where adjudicating value add is more complex, we have looked to extraordinary levels of investment in the whole child beyond academics.
When we have looked at 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.
All of the schools shortlisted endeavour to deliver a benchmark for the best British education for children, available in the UAE. Each of them stakes a claim to, and believes passionately, that they offer the very best British education available in the UAE for their students. That matters – a school that does not believe that it offers the best education available for their children is one that should arguably be putting children first by sending them elsewhere. Ambition for children in education is something that should always be recognised, and certainly not discounted.
We have also looked at the basic metrics of wellbeing – all schools here invest in, and believe in, wellbeing – and the, much harder to attain, happiness of children. The latter, depending on the school culture and dynamics, is not always easy to achieve – but all of these schools have the systems in place to respond to the wellbeing needs of children in the context of the need of their own role, school culture and purpose.
With different schools, particular strengths in one or more area have been used to allow for our subjective perception of weaknesses in others.
It is worth noting that most of these schools see themselves as British and international. Rightly so. The possibilities and advantages for students being educated in the UAE should be celebrated for the amazing advantages this does give to students over their peers at home. Students graduate from our schools with a level of cultural sophistication and understanding that peer schools, even the most outstanding, in home countries, can only read about in books. In some limited cases too, there are alternative qualification pathways available that take the schools beyond an exclusively British curriculum. All the schools shortlisted here see their Britishness as absolutely central to who they are and what they achieve for children, young men, and young women.
Finally, we have looked across all areas of provision, investment, innovation and achievement that support each school being shortlisted.
In summary, each of these schools we believe, with conviction, offers an inspirational, absolutely outstanding British education to their children – and in many cases one that sets global benchmarks. You can read our full criteria here.
Our Top 5 Finalists
The Top Schools Awards 2023 – 2024
Cranleigh Abu Dhabi
“Beyond astonishing school that does everything, absolutely everything, extraordinarily – and with recent changes offers a breadth of curriculum and subject pathways that adds another plus to “Outstanding Plus.” Whole child provision across-the-board sets the heart on fire and the imagination firing on all cylinders – yes, it’s that good. Traditional and yet forward thinking, and with money no object, this school is pretty much the perfect option for every student. Phenomenal.”
Cranleigh Abu Dhabi – review here and here.
Dubai College
“Undoubtedly the benchmark academically selective school in the UAE – but it’s also up there with the best globally. To understand DC, you have to see it through the prism of a school that looks after a very special and rare type of child that would not find an easy home elsewhere. This is a school that saves children, very much like the Catcher in Catcher in the Rye. You also have to understand that this is a school as much about Sport, Music, the Performing Arts as it is about the intellect, if not more so. The children who achieve a place here have opportunities to visit places in the heart and mind, and receive a level of understanding, that just does not exist anywhere else. It’s competitive – just imagine the challenges of delivering “everything” for a powder keg of such talented students for whom enough will never be enough. It’s for that reason that getting wellbeing and happiness right here, is such a challenge – but one visited with quite exceptional and painstaking levels of attention, diligence and care.”
Dubai College – review here and here.
Nord Anglia International School Dubai
“We think that this is the definitive Nord Anglia School worldwide – it is absolutely outstanding. A school known historically for its beyond passionate love of the IB, and a delivery of the Diploma second-to-none, won hearts and minds for its courage in diversifying its offer to include alternative gold-standard A levels. In doing so it signalled its absolute care for its students and commitment, whatever the cost, to ensure that no child at Nord Anglia International School Dubai is ever left behind, or does not find a qualification or subject pathway able to light their path to achieving beyond every possible ambition. Whole child provision in the Arts is a phenomenon – you never forget a performance by a Nord Anglia Dubai child or group of children. Never. This is a school that has played a pivotal role in the evolution of education, and the expectations for education, in the UAE – and it is all the more remarkable that it has done so in such a relatively short time. It is impossible to imagine Dubai education without it.”
Nord Anglia International School Dubai – review here and here.
Safa Community School
“The Safa Schools have something that cannot be learned in books, or taught in classes. They have that indefinable something that makes children love learning. That makes children love school. That makes children adore their teachers. The chemistry of a Safa School is one that makes joy, and keeps on making it, and making it, and making it….. It is unstoppable and a visit to a Safa School is like visiting a City of the Future built around happiness, potential, discovery, learning – and hope. It is true of both Safa Schools, but we had to choose one, and the opening of one of the most extraordinary Sixth Forms in the UAE at Safa Community School means that it unanimously secured our nomination here. Building cars, constructing beyond beautiful furniture, exploring the future of batteries, a design and technology labs that brings the imagination to life every day for children….. a building that grows from the landscape proudly facing the future with all the architectural magnificence of a ship cutting through the oceans to find answers to the questions that come ceaselessly from its students – descriptions of magnificent schooling would fill a book. An absolutely beautiful school, deeply caring, even spiritually so – this is a real home for children, one that delivers everything important – and in spades.”
Safa Community School – review here and here.
The British School Al Khubairat
“Arguably the most important British school in Abu Dhabi and one with a richness of history, and inclusive commitment to children, that is pretty much unmatched in the Emirates. This is the school, after all, that first delivered the study of Engineering into UAE schools – and did so, in no small part, to pioneer a pathway for young women that had been closed off elsewhere. This is a school that looks at its children, every single one of them, as individuals that can, and will, change the world for the better and achieve anything they set their hearts on – and then throws everything behind making that happen. Innovation is everywhere. You even find studios in corridors where children paint, invent, create – there is nowhere where activity and the bustle of learning is not alive and bursting at the seams with creativity, invention and freedom of expression. The new Science and Innovation Centre fires the engines even further. Above all, this is a deeply, deeply humane school, one driven by its belief in young people and the potential of learning as a force for good. Girls are celebrated here as all children are. Those forgotten in other schools are the centre of the universe. The compassion of never walking by on the other side is a way of life. The result is a richness of education, and educational opportunity, that creates students that will grow to be the adults you would value as friends. Here you find students, and educators, with hearts and minds that see the bigger picture, a deeply human and inclusive one – and then make it real.”
The British School Al Khubairat – review here and here.
Return to contents page: click here.
NEXT Page: Best International Baccalaureate School Finalists revealed…
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