Dubai, UAE · PrivateHartland International School is a British school in Sobha Hartland in Nad Al Sheba, inside Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum City, and its path runs straight through: from FS1 to Year 13, with a Sixth Form of its own. The curriculum is the National Curriculum for England, and the school calls its own way of doing things The Hartland Way: academic demand, enrichment and pastoral support together. The senior stage is broad: more than twenty A level courses, BTEC courses in business and physical education, and the option of taking A levels alongside the Extended Project Qualification; the usual load for a leaver is three A levels. Care is built around tutors and counsellors: tutors follow each pupil's progress, while the school's counsellors handle emotional support, the choice of university and career planning. The campus stands out on the creative side: a 650-seat theatre, a professional recording studio, a music technology room with separate practice rooms, a design technology suite with a 3D design laboratory, a food technology room and a textiles room, a multi-purpose sports hall and a dance studio. There are two pools: a teaching pool for the Foundation Stage and a heated 25-metre pool from Year 1 upwards. Libraries are provided separately in the primary and the secondary school, and outside there is a football pitch and shaded sports courts. The school promises plenty of clubs and interest activities and calls its enrichment programme an integral part of learning, but it publishes no named list. The annual fee rises from 48,781 dirhams in FS1 to 92,803 in Years 12 and 13, and all of it is approved by the KHDA.
Key facts
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
COBIS · accreditationBSO · accreditationBSME · part of the associationWhat stands behind each entry
An association of British schools abroad with a quality inspection of its own. It has nine membership categories, and the word "accredited" appears in seven of them, although COBIS does its own inspection in one: in the rest it recognises an accreditation granted by somebody else.
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 →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 →Programmes of the University of Cambridge: the school teaches to Cambridge syllabuses and enters its pupils for exams that Cambridge marks itself. 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 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.