Dubai, UAE · PrivateRaffles International School stands in the residential area of Umm Suqeim 3 on Al Baghla Street, right by the sea and looking out on the Burj Al Arab, and belongs to the Innoventures Education group, founded in 2005. The curriculum is the English national one, from the nursery group and FS1 through to Year 13, with EYFS in the youngest years. The campus was built for the school and takes up almost 315 thousand square feet: at its core are three large, light-filled atriums, with the classrooms opening straight onto them. Sport here is strong: a competition pool and a training pool, a large sports hall, cricket nets, a multi-use games area, a big playing field and purpose-laid outdoor areas of artificial grass around the whole school, and more than forty different teams train here - football, touch rugby, athletics, volleyball. There is a separate music studio, ICT rooms and drama spaces. The school's language provision is wide. Teaching is in English, and Arabic is compulsory for everyone up to and including Year 12: Arabic A for Arab pupils, Arabic B for the rest, split into beginner, intermediate and advanced groups in every year. From Year 3 everyone picks an additional language - French, Spanish or Chinese - and it runs to the end of Year 9, after which the language choice is settled by the GCSE and IGCSE subjects. Beyond that the school keeps mother tongue programmes with native speakers and coordinators of their own: French, Spanish, Russian, Hindi and German, timetabled inside the school day or after lessons where the group is small. Pupils weak in English are given support decided by an entry assessment from the teachers and the EAL service. Co-curricular classes and sports programmes run from Monday to Thursday after lessons and are free.
Key facts
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
Cambridge · IGCSE, A-Level · authorised programmeBSO · accreditationBSME · part of the associationWhat 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 →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.
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