Dubai, UAE · est. 1997 · PrivateAl Mawakeb Al Barsha opened in 1997 as the second school of the Al Mawakeb family: the first, in Al Garhoud, has run since 1979 and the third, in Al Khawaneej, since 2018. The branch has a KHDA licence of its own, number 20120. Across the three schools there are more than seven and a half thousand pupils and more than sixty nationalities, and they are managed by AMSI. The curriculum is American and emphatically college-preparatory; the school teaches three languages right through the twelve years - English, French and Arabic - and on completion of grade 12 awards an American high school diploma. Beyond the ordinary course there is an Honors programme, Advanced Placement courses and a STEM programme. The guidance service walks pupils through university applications: help with forms, CVs, personal statements and recommendation letters, access to a database of university contacts and annual university fairs with representatives from the UK, the USA, Canada, Australia, Europe and the Middle East. The school publishes a child protection policy and an anti-bullying and cyber-bullying policy.
Key facts
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
NEASC · accreditationCollege Board · authorised programmeAMSI · 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 →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.
AMSI is spelled out on the company's own site as Academia Management Solutions International (v2.amsi.ae; the same wording is the page title of careers.amsi.ae/about-us). It is a management company in education: the site calls it «a management company« offering «comprehensive solutions to investors, schools, and academic enterprises« and speaks of «AMSI- managed schools«. The site dates itself from 1979 — the tagline «Transforming lives since 1979...«. The schools the site names as its own are Al Mawakeb (campuses Al Barsha, Al Garhoud, Al Khawaneej in Dubai), The International School of Arts & Sciences (ISAS, Dubai) and The International School – Al Koura (Lebanon). Student figures disagree across the network's own sites: amsi.ae says «over 200,000 students«, while almawakeb.sch.ae/about-amsi says «over 250000 students«; no total school count is given.
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.