Diyar Private Academy in Fujairah opened on 1 September 2013 and belongs to the Fujairah National Group. It has about 1,500 pupils from 47 countries, stages from Pre-KG at the age of three to grade 12, and teaching is co-educational. The programme is American, on the standards of New York State and the Next Generation Science Standards, with the International Primary Curriculum laid over them in the primary school and the International Middle Years Curriculum in the middle school; Arabic, Islamic studies and social studies follow the programme of the UAE ministry of education. Graduation is arranged as in an American school, by credits: four in English, four in mathematics, four in the sciences, four in social studies, one in the arts, two in physical education and five electives, plus the ministry subjects year by year. The certificate also calls for an external result in language and mathematics: for English a TOEFL iBT from 61, an IELTS from 5 or an EmSAT from 1100; for mathematics an SAT Math from 450 or an EmSAT from 500. What a parent should know and what the school does not write about itself: it holds a live College Board authorisation, three AP courses and six Pre-AP subjects in 2025-2026, and this is visible only in the register, because the word AP appears on no page of the site. The campus is large: two sports halls, a football pitch, two swimming pools, STEAM rooms, computer rooms, a library, a theatre for music and drama productions, a canteen and a clinic with a doctor and a nurse. The ministry of education inspection stands on the school's page as having been carried out in May 2024, and no result is published for it.
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.
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.
International Primary Curriculum: a British primary school programme for children aged 5 to 11. It teaches through themes that draw subjects together rather than through separate subjects; it is published by the International Curriculum Association, formerly Fieldwork Education.
What this means for this school. This is a programme for the primary stage, not an accreditation of the school: the organisation sells it to schools and trains their teachers, but it does not check the quality of teaching at a particular school and keeps no public register of the schools working to it. There is no outside register to check it against, so the entry comes from the school's own words or from the record of its accrediting organisation. The programme has no leaving certificate: at the end of primary school a child moves on to the middle stage, and it is that stage which decides what they finish with.
International Middle Years Curriculum: the continuation of IPC for the middle school, ages 11 to 14. The same organisation and the same thematic frame, only for teenagers.
What this means for this school. As with IPC, this is a programme for one stage rather than an accreditation of the school, and the organisation keeps no public register of the schools working to it. The entry comes from the school's own words or from the record of its accrediting organisation. The programme has no leaving certificate of its own: after it the school takes a pupil on to a final stage - IGCSE, A-Level, IB or a national programme - and that is what to look at.
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.
Fujairah National Group (FNG) is a Fujairah conglomerate in which schools sit as the Diyar Education division alongside fuel, industry, trading, real estate and healthcare; the homepage of fng.ae says «Education is at the heart of FNG», and the group's span is given as «been changing lives for more than three decades». The division page dates the move into education to 1986 - «FNG first ventured into the education sector in 1986» - and lists four institutions: Fujairah Aviation Academy (1986), Diyar Private Academy, Fujairah, Diyar Private Academy, Dibba Early Years & Girls, and Diyar Private Academy, Dibba Boys; the Diyar Private Academy brand itself is dated 2008. School names disagree inside the site: the history page calls them differently - «Diyar International School(Dibba)» from 2008 and «Diyar International Private School, Fujairah» from 2013 - and starts the group's list of companies in 1982. On owning or managing the schools the site says nothing at all: only that the academy «opened its doors».
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.