There are 216 private schools in Dubai providing education for approximately 326,001 students. Given the wide variety of options, how should you choose a private primary school for your child?
1. Shortlist Schools According to Their School Inspection Overall Rating.
If you want an excellent early childhood education provider and primary school in Dubai, choose one with an Outstanding Dubai Schools Inspection Bureau (DSIB) rating, for instance, GEMS Royal Dubai School in the Al Mizhar – Mirdif neighbourhood.
About the DSIB
The DSIB is the inspection arm of the government of Dubai’s Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA). The KHDA is the agency primarily in charge of administering and overseeing the private education sector in Dubai.
Through the DSIB, the KHDA conducts annual school inspections to gauge the overall quality of education in Dubai. It is also meant to keep schools accountable and provide them with benchmarks they can use to improve the quality of their instruction.
However, the school inspection reports generated by the KHDA also give parents an independent and accurate assessment of a school’s educational standards. They provide parents with a ready measure of a school’s excellence in its approach, methodology and, most importantly, results in nurturing and honing the talents of its learners.
In short, the KHDA DSIB rating gives parents a ready benchmark for evaluating their school options.
The following are the KHDA DSIB ratings, from the highest to the lowest:
- Outstanding
- Very Good
- Good
- Acceptable
- Weak
- Very Weak
Creating a Shortlist
Create an initial list of all the private schools in and around your neighbourhood. Next, go to the KHDA website to determine these schools’ DSIB overall ratings.
Next, narrow down your initial list, removing schools with a rating below Good (i.e., Acceptable, Weak and Very Weak) and leaving only schools rated Good, Very Good and Outstanding. Good is the level of quality the KHDA expects from Dubai schools.
Rank the schools in your shortlist according to their overall rating. Outstanding schools should top the list.
2. Evaluate Your Shortlisted Schools According to Specific Quality Indicators.
The KHDA DSIB ratings have individual quality indicators, and a school will have an Outstanding, Very Good, Good, Acceptable, Weak, or Very Weak rating for each.
The DSIB evaluates schools according to how good their students’ attainment and progress are in the following criteria:
- Mathematics
- Science
- English
- Islamic Education
- Arabic as a first language
- Arabic as an additional language
Additionally, it also rates schools on the following criteria:
- The students’ personal and social development
- The school’s teaching and learning
- The leadership and management of the school
- The quality of a student’s learning skills
- How well the curriculum meets the educational needs of all students
- How well the school protects and supports its students
Logically speaking, you want a highly rated school across all indicators. Barring that, you should prioritise the criteria according to your needs and preferences.
Suppose attainment and progress in science, maths and English are your top three priorities. In this case, you will rank the schools in your shortlist according to these indicators. If your priorities are the quality of the students’ learning skills, the curriculum’s ability to meet the educational needs of all students, the students’ personal and social development, and the school’s ability to protect and support its students, then rank the schools according to these criteria.
By the end of this step, you will have ranked the schools in your shortlist according to individual quality indicators. Thus, if you initially have three Outstanding schools on your shortlist, you will finally be able to rank them into first, second and third place. This will make choosing a school in the next step easier.
3. Choose Your School According to Other Deciding Factors.
Ideally, you should choose the top KHDA DSIB Outstanding school in your shortlist. However, other factors may figure in your decision.
Tuition
Check out each school’s tuition fee, then match it against your budget. This will automatically narrow down your list to the schools you can afford.
Learning Approach
You should go for a school that will give your children maximum opportunities to grow and develop. In this case, you may consider a High Performance Learning (HPL) school.
High Performance Learning is an educational framework that schools can use to achieve exceptional student outcomes. It entails a change in approach, perspective and mindset rather than a change in the way a school operates.
At its root is the premise that every child can achieve academic success. To support this assertion, an HPL school equips everyone with the cognitive skills, values, attitudes, and attributes one needs to succeed.
Therefore, an HPL school empowers learners to attain lifelong success regardless of their starting point.
Accreditations
Another factor you might consider is the school’s accreditation. Accreditation from standard-setting bodies means the school has achieved and surpassed clear quality benchmarks.
For instance, if you’re mainly considering British schools, you might want to make accreditation by the Council of British International Schools (COBIS) a criterion for selecting your child’s school.
Accessibility
If you followed step one of this guide, all the schools in your shortlist would belong to your neighbourhood or an area nearby and should all be conveniently located.
However, more than distance, accessibility matters more. Are the roads leading to the school conveniently accessible and, more importantly, safe for all students regardless of their mode of transportation? Preferably, there are clear cycling tracks for those who bike to school, wide sidewalks for those who walk and non-congested roads for those who commute.
Thus, as an additional step, you should visit every school on your shortlist to gauge how accessible it would be if your child were to go there.
Facilities
One other thing you must check on your visit is the school facilities. In particular, you ought to check the classrooms, the laboratories, the cafeteria, the bathrooms, and the gymnasium, among other things. How about internet connectivity and digital equipment? Does the school have ample, functional facilities for its students?
A Systematic Method for Choosing a Private School
At the end of the process outlined above, you will have maybe a couple or a handful of schools that have a high overall DSIB rating, high ratings in individual quality indicators, and meet your other requirements (e.g., tuition, accreditation, learning approach, accessibility, and facilities).
Whichever school you select, you will end up with the school that best suits your requirements and circumstances.