Credence High School is located on a large purpose-built campus located in Al Qouz Industrial area. It is one of several schools located in this area and convenient for the Al Khail and Sheikh Zayed Roads, allowing the school to cover large areas of Dubai, Deira and Sharjah by school bus services. The school was founded by several prominent local Indian businessmen, including Dr. Moopen, who owns the Aster Medical clinics and pharmacies in Dubai.

More: Read the Credence High School Q and A with WSA here.

The school is housed in a large L-shaped 3 floor building with the KG and grade 1 students having access to ground floor classrooms and a shaded outdoor play area with age-appropriate play equipment. Behind the play area is the large playing field and running track with a separate building housing the swimming pool. There is a very large indoor multi-purpose hall which is used for indoor sports activity and for school productions and musical activities. This has large tiered, retractable seating for 700.

Credence High School offers the CBSE curriculum and is currently open from KG1 to Grade 8, with new years opening progressively over the coming years. There are approximately 700 students currently studying in the school – heavily loaded towards the younger students with KG1 (9 classes) and KG2 (6 classes) currently full. The maximum students numbers are 25 per class with a teacher, teaching assistant and nanny staffing each of the KG classes. There is a lively, busy atmosphere with students happily engaged in a range of teacher-supervised activities.

The teaching practices in the Kindergarten section are largely based on approaches drawn from international models such as Montessori, EYFS and Reggio Emilia.  The module of teaching in Grades 2 to 8 is through iDiscoveri’s Xseed teaching-learning programme, which aims to replace traditional teacher-centric methods of teaching (with its emphasis on children listening and learning), with a five-step teaching-learning system.

The Xseed curriculum is based on the guidelines of the National Curriculum Framework, 2005. Xseed has been designed to ensure that each class begins with setting the goals of the lesson, followed by introduction of an experimental activity, teacher-student reflection and analysis, application of learning, and assessment. The comprehensive Xseed programme ensures that children absorb and apply knowledge, instead of merely memorizing texts. It also ensures that all teachers teach well – instead of the just exceptional ones – and all students learn.

A typical Xseed class invokes the experience that the children have gone through themselves. They are then made to reflect on the experience, followed up by analysis/assessment.

The children form hypotheses and make theories which they validate or disprove through experimentation. When children learn how to apply their knowledge in a completely new situation the learning cycle is completed, taking every type of learner through the experience.

Xseed uses a theme-based approach to impart multiple skills to the child within the framework of a single concept, or theme framework. The themes chosen begin to familiarise the children with the world around them and aim for development in many areas simultaneously.

The school is clearly too new to assess the effectiveness of teaching within Credence High School, however it is already clear the school offers a very bright, airy environment with committed staff for quite reasonable fees. These currently range from 15,000 AED for FS1 to 26,000 AED to Year 12 – intermediate pricing for an Indian curriculum school.