Pupils and staff at one of the newest schools in Al Ain are celebrating after earning the highest ranking in annual inspections – a first for the city.

Brighton College Al Ain, an English curriculum school that opened in 2013 and teaches 617 pupils, is one of only five in the emirate to be recognised with a ranking of “outstanding”.

The results of April’s inspection were recently published by the Abu Dhabi Education Council.

Adec also posted inspection reports for 24 other schools that were audited in the third term of the last academic year.

Of these, two were “very good” – Gems World Academy Abu Dhabi and the German International School.

ABC Private School, a new English curriculum school that opened last year and has 1,458 pupils, was the only one to be graded as very weak, the lowest ranking, in the inspection.

Inspectors said it was very weak in each of the performance standards against which all schools are judged: pupils’ achievement; pupils’ personal and social development, pupils’ innovation skills; teaching and assessment; curriculum; the protection, care, guidance and support of pupils and leadership and management. Calls made to the school yesterday were not answered.

In Dubai, private schools are not inspected during their first two years of operation.

Afaf Rady Ghanem, academic adviser for Elite Private School, which used to be a villa school but was inspected as a new school because it moved to upgraded school premises and replaced its staff, said working out the kinks during an inspection had been a challenge.

“If anyone gives us pointers on how to improve or gives us any way to be better, we welcome them,” she said. “We need to work on this. We’re focused, we won’t stop. We are looking for ‘outstanding’. You will see, inshallah. We have a vision to be an ‘outstanding’ school.”

This year, reports for 43 schools inspected between September and December and 42 schools audited between January and March were released.

Adec is expected to issue a statement summarising the findings of the school inspections shortly.

Source: thenational.ae