Dubai, UAE · PrivateThe Sheffield Private School stands in the Al Nahda 2 district of Dubai and belongs to the Britus Education group. The curriculum is the English national one, set out across five key stages: the Foundation Stage for children from three to five on the British EYFS, the primary school from five to eleven - two years of Key Stage 1 and four of Key Stage 2 - the secondary school from Year 7 and the senior years to Year 13. Added to the British curriculum are the UAE Ministry of Education subjects: Arabic - Arabic B to Year 10 for non-native speakers and Arabic A to Year 11 - Islamic studies or a course in personal, social and health education, physical education and social-emotional learning, and they are compulsory for everyone on top of the examination subjects. In Key Stage 4, Years 10 and 11, pupils work towards the IGCSE examinations, and the choice of subjects is wide: geography, media, Arabic as a first and as a second language, ICT, computer science, psychology, sociology, history, and BTECs in sport, ICT and business. In Key Stage 5 the school offers three routes: the International AS and A Levels, where Year 12 pupils take four AS subjects and sit them in January or later; a purely vocational BTEC route with no traditional exams; and a mixture of the two shaped around the pupil's interests. The school names High Performance Learning as a separate framework and calls its own enrichment programme the Ultra-Curriculum. The campus is large and open: a three-storey, well-integrated building with central air conditioning, with the school's administrative centre and the Foundation Stage and Year 1 classrooms on the ground floor. Wide, bright corridors lead to year group areas, each with its own bathrooms and homeroom bases. Classrooms have digital projectors, interactive whiteboards and high-speed wifi. Outside there are generous sports facilities, inside specialised teaching areas.
Key facts
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
Cambridge · IGCSE, A-Level · authorised programmeBSO · accreditationCognia · candidateBSME · 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 →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 is a candidate for accreditation by this organisation: the route has been started but not completed. Candidacy speaks of an application made and a file accepted for consideration, not of the outcome of an inspection, and the organisations themselves usually require schools to say that it does not guarantee accreditation. The candidacy 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 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.