Dubai, UAE · PrivateNewlands School works in the Al Warqa district of Dubai and gives a British education in what it itself calls a values-based and international setting. It explains its approach through knowing the child: it promises to get to know every child and every family and to work out the child's strengths together with the parents, using research tools to do it. The school gives few figures of its own, but it does give some: more than 1,100 pupils, more than 120 teachers and a pupil to teacher ratio of 16 to 1. It belongs to an international group and speaks of it in the group's figures - six countries, 785 campuses and nearly 350 thousand pupils around the world. The stages run from the early years through primary to secondary; there is a separate support service for pupils with special needs and a separate Arabic programme. The main thing a parent needs to know: the school keeps its fees page without figures, and what a year costs cannot be found out from its site.
Key facts
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
Cambridge · authorised programmeBeaconhouse Education Group · 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. Which stages - from the early years programme for three-year-olds up to A-Level - this school is approved for is not stated here.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →Beaconhouse is a school group of Pakistani origin; its site beaconhouse.net dates its start to 1975: «Established in November 1975 as the Les Anges Montessori Academy with 19 toddlers», «began as a small nursery in a private house in Lahore in 1975». Numbers and countries disagree inside that site: the About us page gives «400,000+ students across six countries», while the Group Profile page says «over 311,000 students studying in eight countries»; the country list on the homepage («the Malaysia, the Philippines, Pakistan, the UAE, Oman, and Thailand») differs from the one on the regional site beaconhousemena.com, «established in the UK, Malaysia, the Philippines, Pakistan, the UAE, Oman, Belgium and Thailand». The Middle East arm lives on beaconhousemena.com and lists five schools: Newlands School in Dubai, Beaconhouse School System Al Ain, Beaconhouse Al Khaleej in Sharjah, and two sites in Oman - Al Khuwair and Qurum. The group has more than one name on its own pages: Group Profile writes «The Beaconhouse Group», the regional site is headed «The Beaconhouse School System», and the name «Beaconhouse Education Group» comes from the schools' own prose. The group calls its arms «distinct and independent divisions»; whether it owns or manages the schools no page says.
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.