RAK Academy - Khuzam
Ras Al Khaimah, UAE · est. 1975 · PrivateRAK Academy has been teaching in Ras Al Khaimah since 1975; it is a not-for-profit family of schools, and together they hold more than 2,600 pupils from eighty countries. This card is about its main campus, Khuzam, where more than fifteen hundred pupils run from Pre-K to grade 12. What sets the academy apart is that parents are given a choice of curriculum: the English national one or the IB, and the choice runs right through, in the primary school and in the secondary. Key Stage 3 and Key Stage 4 at Khuzam run both routes, and Key Stage 5 - grades 11 and 12 - offers A Levels, the vocational BTEC and the IB Diploma Programme. Early childhood starts at three and is bilingual, in English and Arabic. The Khuzam campus is split between primary and secondary and the school maps it building by building: in the primary, a reception with the administration offices, the upper school library and a canteen on the upper floors, a wing for Pre-K and KG1 with PYP music, art and ICT rooms and grade 3, a wing for KG2 and grades 1 and 2 with the lower primary canteen and a national curriculum music room, grades 4 and 5 with national curriculum art and ICT rooms, a separate building with the lower primary library, a small gym and the school clinic, and a theatre, a football field, a big gym and a basketball court. The enrichment programme is rewritten each year around pupils' interests, and alongside it there are sports teams, a house system and student leadership.
Key facts
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
Cambridge · A-Level · authorised programmeBSME · 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: A-Level (ages 16-18). 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 →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 →The International Baccalaureate: programmes of a Swiss organisation, among the most widely recognised school programmes in the world. Each stage is authorised separately, so a school may hold one of them, two, or all four. PYP is the primary stage, ages 3 to 12. It is not a set of subjects but a frame for the whole school: learning is built around lines of inquiry, and there are no exams at the end. DP is the final stage, ages 16 to 19: six subjects plus a compulsory core of theory of knowledge, an extended essay and CAS. The diploma is accepted by universities all over the world, and in a number of countries it counts for admission on the same footing as the local leaving certificate.
What this means for this school. Authorisation for each stage is granted by the organisation itself after an on-site visit, and a school has to go through it again every few years. Every authorised school in the world stands in the open register at ibo.org, where the status can be checked independently. The IB diploma is awarded by the organisation rather than by the school, and the papers are marked by external examiners, so a leaver's grade does not depend on how strict their own school is with them.
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.