Jebel Ali Primary School is one of a select number ofWhichSchoolAdvisor.com Good Schools.
It also has almost exactly the same strengths as it had when it was judged to be Outstanding by the KHDA in 2011/12. What has changed significantly since then has been the criteria used to benchmark schools within the UAE. Both the KHDA and ADEC have added increased weight to Arabic and Islamic Studies when combining ratings into a final score. These are areas, as a parent, you may not consider as important as the UAE’s Ministry of Education clearly does.
A cursory glance at the KHDA’s latest report (2014/15) reveals outstanding ratings for English, Maths and Science – but almost no headway on either Arabic or Islamic studies. In fact its latest report showed a slip to an unsatisfactory rating at Primary for attainment and progress in both areas.
This is one reason why a deeper reading of a KHDA report is important. New principal Jacquie Parr and her experienced leadership team are rightly proud of what this not-for-profit school continues to achieve, year in, year out. This is a school that really does outperform, especially given the issues it has had with the owner of the land it is on. Fortunately for the school it looks like its the beginning of the end of those difficulties: It is moving to a new location in September 2016, when its name will change to Jebel Ali School, and it will offer secondary education for the first time. It will remain a not for profit school – although introduce a debenture scheme to help pay for the relocation.
Its new location, size, debenture scheme and secondary level fees (75,000 AED for Year 7 upwards) should however give it the economies of scale to begin to tackle those areas judged weaknesses by the KHDA, That it moves with such an established, and high performing team, should give parents that move with it confidence that this is a school that can handle relocation, a new building and indeed curriculum with secondary, and maintain business as usual.
Although for the most part JAPS remains consistently outstanding in terms of rating, there is no doubt it has found the last 12 to 24 months trying and distracting. There were few improvements over the last 12 months, in fact in many areas it moved backwards. Progress in Islamic Education declined to acceptable, progress and attainment in Arabic both as first language and as an additional language had declined to unsatisfactory. The quality of assessment declined to good in both stages. The quality of governance also declined to good.
