Dubai, UAE · PrivateGEMS Metropole School stands on Honsho Road in Uptown Motor City and takes children from three to eighteen under the National Curriculum of England. Inside, the school is divided into four "schools" - Forest, Values, Active and Future - each with classrooms built for the age of its pupils. It sits a wide range of examinations: in Years 10-11 more than eighteen subject options across GCSE, iGCSE and Level 2 iBTEC, in Years 12-13 as many again across A-level and Level 3 iBTEC, with Pearson Edexcel and AQA as the boards. Arabic and Islamic studies run as a separate strand. The campus is large and sporting: two multi-purpose halls, a main pool and a trainer pool, an astro turf for football and an athletics track, courts for tennis, basketball and netball, a dance studio, a fitness studio, a dojo and cricket nets. On the academic side there are seven secondary science labs, three libraries plus a separate Arabic library, music and art rooms, a Black Box theatre, a radio and performance studio, a hydroponics area and a school farm. The school publishes no pupil numbers, no examination results and no list of its own leavers' universities: the destinations page describes the GEMS network as a whole rather than this school.
Key facts
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
BSO · accreditationGEMS · school is part of the networkWhat stands behind each entry
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 →Programmes of the University of Cambridge: the school teaches to Cambridge syllabuses and enters its pupils for exams that Cambridge marks itself. IGCSE means exams at around Year 10 or 11, the British counterpart of a lower secondary leaving certificate. A-Level is the senior years, and their results are what British and many other universities admit on.
What this means for this school. The papers are marked by Cambridge, not by the school, so a leaver's grade does not depend on how strict their own teachers are with them. To enter pupils for these exams a school has to be registered as a Cambridge exam centre; registration as a centre is permission to run exams rather than accreditation of the school, and it says nothing about the quality of teaching. IGCSE is taken at around Year 10 or 11 and A-Level in the final years, and it is the A-Level results that carry a pupil into British and many other universities.
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.
A British vocational qualification from Pearson: not an academic course with an exam at the end, but a programme of practical assignments in a particular trade, from engineering and business to art and sport.
What this means for this school. Teaching and assessment work differently from A-level: instead of written exams there is a run of practical assignments marked by the school, while Pearson checks the school itself and samples the work. British universities do accept BTEC, but not all of them and not for every course: level 3 carries the same UCAS points as A-level, and that is what a family aiming at a particular university should look at. For a child who needs the classic academic route, BTEC is not a replacement for A-level but a different path.
GEMS Education is a private school group that describes itself on its own site as one of the oldest and largest K-12 (to Grade 12 / Year 13) private education providers in the world. The site dates its start to 1959 («Our story began in 1959«, «65+ Years of Legacy«), while another page on the same site says «over 60 Years of Legacy«. School counts on the site disagree: the homepage says both «52 schools across the UAE, Qatar and Egypt« and «Choose from our list of over 47 schools«, while the Our Company page says GEMS has schools «in the Middle East, North Africa, Asia, Europe and North America«. Students: «200,000 students from over 176 countries« (Our Company) and «over 200,000« (homepage). On ownership the site is explicit: «GEMS Education own, operate and manage schools globally« — it both owns and manages, but does not say which schools fall into which category.
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.