Sharjah, UAE · PrivateEmirates American School, or EAS, is an American curriculum school in the Al Qarrayen district of Sharjah, in Al Falah-6 next to the national park, running from Pre-KG to Grade 12, and it belongs to the Singaporean Global Schools Group network. The school describes itself as a joining of American education with Arab culture: in the kindergarten the programme is built on the American Common Core standards, alongside them run the compulsory UAE subjects - Arabic and Islamic studies - and beyond those Quran and tajweed classes, an Arabic language week and the celebrations of National Day and Flag Day. There are four stages: the kindergarten of Pre-KG, KG1 and KG2 for children from three to five, the elementary school from Grade 1 to Grade 5, the middle school from Grade 6 to Grade 8 and the high school from Grade 9 to Grade 12. The high school offers Advanced Placement courses and electives, the school tracks attainment through external SAT, MAP and Emirati Ta'la assessments, and a university admissions service works there too. The school has gathered its extracurricular programme into a frame of eight strands and called it 'Nojoom', from the stars: academic excellence, the sustainable development goals, sport, innovation and entrepreneurship, creativity, diversity and global outlook, Arab virtues and community engagement; the Spark programme runs alongside. The clubs are named: STEM, art, music, drama, coding, entrepreneurship, ecology, Islamic values and community service, while sport fields teams in basketball, football, volleyball, swimming, badminton and athletics; separately the school has arranged with Sharjah Women's Sports for girls to train on the emirate's programmes with qualified coaches. The campus the school describes as a modern building joining Islamic architecture to contemporary design: science laboratories and computer rooms, libraries with print and digital collections, a football pitch, basketball courts and a pool, art studios, music rooms and extensive playgrounds; on the security side there is CCTV, fingerprint-operated doors, guarded entrances and exits, regular fire drills and a medical room with a resident doctor and nurses. The main thing a parent needs to know: the fee is low for an American curriculum - from 17,740 dirhams in Pre-KG to 30,830 in Grade 12 - but the school does not name its founding year at all, and there are no pupil or staff numbers on the site.
Key facts
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
MSA · accreditationCognia · accreditationCollege Board · authorised programmeGlobal Schools Group · school is part of the networkWhat 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 →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.
Global Schools Group (GSG) is a Singapore school group; its own site globalschools.com says «a leading international education organisation with 64 campuses across 11 countries» (Locations page) and «64 International campuses» on the homepage, dates itself from 2002 («From our beginnings in 2002»), and its homepage counters render «0» and «0 k», so the student figures there are not filled in. On the site of its Indian brand GIIS (globalindianschool.org) the same group prints «64 Campuses», «11 Countries», «45k Students», «5k+ Faculty» and the wording of belonging - «We are a proud member of the Global Schools Group (GSG)». Country counts disagree inside the network: the page of the Dubai GIIS campus (globalindianschool.org/dubai/about) says «seven countries throughout Asia» and dates the group with the same phrase, «Since its inception in 2002». The roster disagrees too: the campus list on globalschools.com/locations names only two schools in the UAE - Emirates American School and Glendale International School - while the Dubai GIIS campus, which has its own pages on a site of the same group, is not in that list. Neither ownership nor management is stated anywhere: the schools' relation to the group is described by the word «member».
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.