The International School of Choueifat - Ras Al Khaimah
Ras Al Khaimah, UAE · est. 1986 · PrivateThe International School of Choueifat - Ras Al Khaimah has been working since 1986 and belongs to the SABIS network, which means it teaches by that network's own system from Pre-KG to grade 12. There are three languages in the programme from the very start: the school writes plainly that its programme takes a pupil to fluency in English, Arabic and French. Grade 9 opens a four-year cycle leading to graduation in grade 12: beyond the SABIS high school diploma, pupils prepare for the UAE national examinations and for external examinations of their choice - IGCSE, AS and A Level, the American Advanced Placement and SAT, IELTS and TOEFL. The campus is a large one, 67 thousand square metres: spacious classrooms with interactive boards, science and computer laboratories, a library, an art room, a semi-Olympic pool and a second one, indoor and heated, a large multi-purpose hall with air conditioning, and a bright dining hall where pupils may eat what they have brought from home or buy sandwiches and fruit. The school's distinctive feature is its integrated testing hall, ITL, a computerised centre where pupils sit examinations and go back over what they have covered. The kindergarten stands in a separate building with colourful corridors of its own, a large playground, an indoor pool and rooms of its own. After lessons there is training for the school teams in basketball, football, volleyball, swimming and athletics for pupils from grade 3 to grade 12, and there are clubs and weekend activities as well; a general list of clubs the school does not publish. Separately it runs a pupil body, the SABIS Student Life Organization, with a system of prefects.
Key facts
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
Cambridge · IGCSE, A-Level · authorised programmeSABIS · part of the networkMSA · accreditationCollege Board · authorised programmeSABIS · 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), A-Level (ages 16-18). 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.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →Lebanese in origin, with more than seventy thousand pupils in twenty-one countries. It works in different ways: through its own schools, by running other people's under contract, and by simply selling the programme to a school that stays under its own management.
What the badge means for this school. The relationship is set out in a commercial contract. Under the licensing model SABIS neither owns nor runs the school at all: the badge means a package of programmes and methods was bought, not that anyone vouches for how the school works. The entry is confirmed in the organisation's open directory.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →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 →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.
A programme written by the school or its operator, with no independent organisation behind it: the rules are written by the same people who teach to them. There is no outside register to check such a programme against.
What this means for this school. This does not mean the teaching is poor: it means the content can be judged only from the school's own account of it. What to look at here is something else - the accreditation of the school as a whole, and the outside exams its leavers sit.