Dubai, UAE · PrivateRepton School Al Barsha is a British school for children from three to eighteen, part of the Cognita family of schools. Its inheritance is a long one: Repton School in Derbyshire was founded in 1557 by Sir John Port, a Member of Parliament knighted by King Edward VI, and out of that inheritance grew a family of international schools, among them Repton Dubai, opened in 2007 by the founder of the Emirati branch, Khaled Al Mheiri. What the school carried over from England and names as its distinguishing mark is the house system: pupils and staff hold to their house, and the school considers inter-house rivalry one of the most marked parts of its life. The stages run in small steps, in the English way: the Foundation Stage, the First School for Years 1 and 2, the Lower and Upper Junior Schools, the Senior School from Year 7 to Year 11 and the Sixth Form in Years 12 and 13. The fee is the same for every year group from Year 7 to Year 13 - 89,774 dirhams - so moving up to the senior stage adds nothing for a family. The leaving qualification is A level, and the school says many of its leavers receive offers from leading universities worldwide.
Key facts
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
Cambridge · A-Level · authorised programmeCOBIS · membershipBSME · part of the associationCognita · 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: 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 →An association of British schools abroad with a quality inspection of its own. It has nine membership categories, and the word "accredited" appears in seven of them, although COBIS does its own inspection in one: in the rest it recognises an accreditation granted by somebody else.
What the badge means for this school. The school belongs to this organisation but has not been through its accreditation. The difference matters: membership is usually paid for and has no external inspection behind it. The entry is confirmed in the organisation's open directory.
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 →A group of schools launched in 2004; the legal entity in the footer of the site is Cognita Holdings Limited. The site names 90 schools in 21 countries, 14 curricula and more than 22,000 staff, and the numbers agree on all the pages read. The section on a school joining the group speaks of working with the owners of schools and of integrating the school, but does not say outright whether the school passes into ownership; the word "franchise" does not appear on the site. The majority owner of Cognita itself is named as Jacobs Holding AG.
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.