Dubai, UAE · est. 1990 · PrivateNew Academy School is an American school in Bur Dubai, founded in September 1990 and run by Atticus Education L.L.C.; it is one of the older schools in the city. It takes children from four to eighteen and carries them for fourteen years in a row - from KG1 to Grade 12 - divided into kindergarten, elementary, middle and high school. The curriculum is American, with Arabic, Islamic studies and social studies added under the national programme of the UAE. The school describes itself first of all as a multinational community: forty-six nationalities among its pupils and twenty-two among its staff, and it names as its values international openness, collaboration, wellbeing, inclusion, resilience, respect and discipline. Of external confirmations it holds NEASC accreditation, which it puts straight on its home page, and a record in the register of the American organisation Cognia; it operates by permission of the KHDA, and the Dubai regulator has rated it Good. The school keeps an SAT examination centre of its own and announces the test date on its home page - no small thing for a family aiming at an American university, since the child does not have to travel to another school to sit it. The school day runs Monday to Thursday from 7:30 to 14:30 and on Friday to 11:30. A parent should know that the fee cannot be checked on the site: the fees page serves only the regulator's fact sheets by year group and at times comes up empty, while the school states plainly that the total covers tuition, books and transport.
Key facts
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
NEASC · accreditationCognia · accreditationCollege Board · authorised programmeWhat stands behind each entry
An American accreditation working since 1885. For international schools it uses an approach where the visitors look first at live lessons rather than at folders of paperwork: the team works in the school for about a week. It is the only one here whose public directory honestly separates accredited schools from candidates.
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.