Dubai, UAE · est. 1987 · PrivateAl Maaref American School opened in 1987 under the name Al Maaref Private School and stands on Baghdad Street in Al Qusais. It now belongs to First Education Holding, a company set up in 2006 in Bahrain that buys up K-12 schools across the region. The curriculum is American: the Californian Common Core standards plus the UAE Ministry of Education national standards, with grading on a US scale. Arabic, Islamic studies, moral education and social studies stand alongside the English course, and the school states plainly that it aims at a pupil's confidence in both languages. In the kindergarten the work goes through free-flow play by areas: the outdoors, a STEAM lab, a mud kitchen, sand and water, and a dramatic area. A distinctive feature of the senior stage: in grades 11 and 12 pupils may take dual credit courses under agreements with Skyline University, the American University of Sharjah and Ajman University, that is earn university credit while still at school. The day is short: arrival at 7:30, ending at 13:55 from Monday to Wednesday, 13:35 on Thursday and 11:00 on Friday.
Key facts
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
NEASC · accreditationCognia · accreditationCollege Board · authorised programmeFirst Education Holding · school is part of the networkWhat stands behind each entry
An American accreditation working since 1885. For international schools it uses an approach where the visitors look first at live lessons rather than at folders of paperwork: the team works in the school for about a week. It is the only one here whose public directory honestly separates accredited schools from candidates.
What the badge means for this school. The school has been through this organisation's accreditation. It was judged as a whole: governance, safeguarding, staff, premises, teaching. The entry stands in the organisation's public register - anyone can check it.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →The widest-reaching American accreditation: some forty thousand schools in over a hundred countries. It accredits both individual schools and whole school systems. It also sells a paid membership with no inspection behind it, and that membership is often passed off as accreditation.
What the badge means for this school. The school has been through this organisation's accreditation. It was judged as a whole: governance, safeguarding, staff, premises, teaching. The entry stands in the organisation's public register - anyone can check it.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →An American organisation that allows a school to put the letters AP on a pupil's transcript. The permission is granted course by course and tied to a particular teacher, it has to be renewed every year, and College Board reads the course syllabus before granting it.
What the badge means for this school. The school is allowed to run advanced AP courses - not the school as a whole, but one by one: by subject and by teacher. Governance, safeguarding and the primary years are not part of that check. Which subjects are actually approved is visible in the ledger. The entry stands in the organisation's public register - anyone can check it. Authorisation here runs a year at a time: the register lists the school for the 2025-2026 school year.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →Advanced Placement: American advanced courses for the senior years. The exam for a course is set and marked by the College Board, not by the school. A good result is counted by American universities as a first-year course already passed, which saves a student time and money.
What this means for this school. A school does not get to call a course AP automatically: the College Board reads the course syllabus and approves it separately for every subject and every teacher, and the permission has to be renewed each year. Every approved school in the world is listed in the open AP Course Ledger, and this school's entry there stands as a line in the accreditation block above. How many courses a school is approved for, and in which subjects, the ledger does not show in its general listing. AP has no leaving certificate of its own: it sits on top of the school's main programme rather than being a separate system.
The American school programme, with the High School Diploma at the end. It usually comes together with AP courses, which the College Board stands behind, and with an American accreditation - MSA, NEASC or Cognia.
What this means for this school. The diploma is written out by the school itself: the American programme has no common leaving exam, and the content of the senior years is set by the school. Outside checking therefore rests on two things here - the accreditation of the school, and the AP exams if the school runs them.
First Education Holding is an education holding whose site carries the line «Empowering Minds, Enriching Futures: Education Excellence Across MENA and Beyond«. The site is explicit about operation and management: «All schools operated and managed by First Education Holding deliver accredited and high-quality education«. The portfolio differs between pages of the same site: the homepage lists Al Maaref Private School (Dubai), The Egyptian Child Care Corporate (Cairo, «4,500 students yearly«) and Levant Academy Schools (Amman, capacity 1,200), while the inner page /feh/ lists Al Zuhour Private School (Sharjah), Al Maaref Private School (Dubai) and The Baby Academy (Egypt). On dates, the site says Al Zuhour was established in 1995 and acquired by the holding in 2008; no founding year for the holding itself is given. In the UAE the site therefore shows two schools — in Dubai and Sharjah.
What this means for this school. The network owns or operates the school. Its accreditation and programme authorisation the school obtains separately, in its own name.