Dubai, UAE · PrivateArcadia Global School is a British school in Dubai beside the Al Furjan metro station, and it has no leaving year yet: its stages run from FS1 to Year 9, while the fee schedule runs to Year 10, so the school is growing along with its pupils. The curriculum is EYFS for FS1 and FS2, primary Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 (Year 1 to Year 6), Key Stage 3 (Year 7 to Year 9) and after that the IGCSE examinations; the examination boards are Pearson Edexcel and Cambridge Assessment International Education, and the school holds Cambridge International School certification. Over and above the curriculum it runs the Junior MBA and EDGE enrichment courses. Among the things that set it apart the school names a "BSO Inspected" mark, membership of AoBSO, a School of Character PLUS award and up to 31.5 million dirhams handed out in scholarships. The fee is low by Dubai standards, and the school keeps two schedules, one for new pupils and one for its own, with discounts from 23 to 43 per cent.
Key facts
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
Cambridge · IGCSE · authorised programmeBSO · accreditationBSME · part of the associationArcadia Education · school is part of the networkWhat stands behind each entry
Part of the University of Cambridge. It allows a school to teach the Cambridge programmes and to enter pupils for the exams. There are four stages and they are authorised separately: primary, lower secondary, IGCSE and A Level. If the stages are known they are named in the line below; if that line is missing, the school does not publish them, and the Cambridge registry does not show stages either - it gives only the name of the centre, the country and whether private candidates are accepted. Cambridge calls what it does registration rather than accreditation, and the network holds about ten thousand schools.
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: IGCSE (ages 14-16). IGCSE means exams at around Year 10 or 11, the British counterpart of a lower secondary leaving certificate.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →A scheme of the UK Department for Education: a school abroad is inspected against the standards for independent schools in England, including safeguarding and the standards for boarding. The inspections are done by independent inspectorates approved by the department, and the inspectorates themselves are monitored annually by Ofsted. The reports are published in full on the government website.
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 →One hundred and eighty schools in ten countries - Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE; more than half of the membership is in the UAE. It runs no inspections of its own at all. Instead it requires somebody else's accreditation, and the requirement is strict: a school not already accredited on joining must gain accreditation within two years and then maintain it. The inspectorates are EDT or ISI, which means the accreditation in question is the British government's BSO scheme. The organisation has withdrawn its former lighter routes in - one route remains.
What the badge means for this school. The school belongs to the association, and the association requires its members to hold a real accreditation: for Gulf schools that is almost always BSO. What to look at is that accreditation rather than this badge. Nor is the badge empty - there is no inspection of its own behind it, but a school is not admitted to the association without somebody else's accreditation. The entry is confirmed in the organisation's open directory.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →A British exam board, the second after Cambridge. It issues its own versions of IGCSE and A-Level: the programme is the same in substance, what differs is who sets and marks the exams.
What this means for this school. The exams are set and marked by Pearson, and the school acts as an exam centre. Universities accept IGCSE and A-Level from Pearson on the same footing as the Cambridge ones. One caveat about checking: the Pearson centre search shows only those centres that agreed to be shown, so the absence of a school from it proves nothing.
Arcadia Education is a Dubai group that presents itself on its own site as «a family of schools and educational services in Dubai«. The Arcadia Global School site describes the group as «Arcadia Education, the Al Shirawi Group's foray into K-12 education«, founded by Mohan Valrani, and names Navin Valrani as founding CEO of Arcadia Education. The brand covers two schools — Arcadia British School (Jumeirah Village Triangle, FS1–Year 13) and Arcadia Global School (Al Furjan, FS1–Year 10) — plus the services Forward Thinking Mentoring and The Tutoring Center (four locations). On dates the site gives campus openings: Arcadia British School primary campus 2016, secondary 2019, Arcadia Global School 2023; no founding year for the group itself. The student figure on the site renders as a counter «0 Students nurtured«, i.e. the number does not load.
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.