American Community School of Abu Dhabi
Abu Dhabi, UAE · est. 1972 · PrivateThe American Community School of Abu Dhabi is a non-profit American school that has run in the capital since 1972, one of the oldest international schools in the emirate. It has about 1,315 students from more than eighty countries, nine students per teacher, and two thirds of its teachers hold advanced degrees. In January 2024 the school moved from its old campus in Al Bateen, where it had spent half a century, to a new one on Saadiyat Island next to New York University Abu Dhabi: the six-hectare plot was granted to the school by Abu Dhabi's leadership, the area is twice the size of the old one, and the school calls the campus a regional benchmark for environmental sustainability. The programme is American, built on four pillars - academics, the arts, athletics and service learning - and in the high school the school runs two routes at once: Advanced Placement courses and the IB Diploma, more than a hundred academic programmes in all. Eighty-seven per cent of leavers are accepted to at least one of their top three college choices. The stages run straight through: KG1 to grade 5, grades 6 to 8, grades 9 to 12. Sport is a particular pride: more than fifty teams for students from grade 4 to grade 12, four seasons a year and membership of three conferences - the junior JEAC, the middle-school EAC and the main regional MESAC, which the school co-founded in 2010 with the American schools of Dubai and Doha. The seasons carry golf, swimming, volleyball, basketball, cross-country, soccer, tennis, wrestling, baseball, badminton, softball and track and field, plus academic games and speech and debate. After lessons the elementary school runs the Mini Vipers programme - about thirty-two activities in each of the year's three sessions - the middle school runs Fun After School with about fifteen, and the middle and high school have around thirty student-led clubs: chess, film, robotics, service. The Vipers swim club is open from KG2 to grade 12 all year round. The main thing a parent needs to know: this is the most expensive school in this batch - from 60,765 to 101,537 dirhams a year - and on top of the fee the school charges a one-off capital fee for the upkeep of the campus.
Key facts
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
MSA · accreditationCIS · accreditationIB · DP · authorised programmeCollege Board · authorised programmeWhat stands behind each entry
One of the oldest American accreditations, working since 1887 in more than a hundred countries and linked to the Office of Overseas Schools of the US State Department. It judges the school as an institution across twelve areas, including finances, governance, premises and student support.
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 →It accredits international schools and is a paying association at the same time. It examines governance and ownership, the curriculum, teaching, student wellbeing, staff and premises; a team of volunteers from other CIS accredited schools visits the school. Membership and accreditation are different things here, and schools confuse them more often than anything else.
What this status would mean. The school has been through this organisation's accreditation. It was judged as a whole: governance, safeguarding, staff, premises, teaching. The school is not in the organisation's register: the status comes from the school's own words.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →A Swiss non-profit, working since 1968. Its programmes are among the most widely recognised school programmes in the world. Authorisation is granted stage by stage, so a school with the final stage does not necessarily run the younger ones; which stages this school holds is set out in the line below.
What the badge means for this school. The school is allowed to run this programme and to award its certificate. This is a confirmation of the programme, not a judgement on the school as a whole. The entry stands in the organisation's public register - anyone can check it. At this school: DP (ages 16-19). DP is the final stage, ages 16 to 19: six subjects plus a compulsory core of theory of knowledge, an extended essay and CAS. The diploma is accepted by universities all over the world, and in a number of countries it counts for admission on the same footing as the local leaving certificate.
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.