Our first report card

As we count down the weeks to our opening in August, I am delighted to share a significant early milestone: Queen Elizabeth's School, Dubai Sports City, has completed its first formal review with COBIS, the Council of British International Schools, the leading accreditation body for British schools overseas. As far as we know, we are the first school opening in Dubai in 2026 that has achieved this status and you can now find us listed on the COBIS Provisional Schools page here:

https://www.cobis.org.uk/membership/for-schools/provisional-schools

Over several months, COBIS's lead assessor examined every aspect of our preparations, from safeguarding practices and staff recruitment to curriculum planning, governance, and the campus itself. The conclusion, in the assessor's own words, could not have been more encouraging:

"QE Dubai Sports City is ready to open successfully and is in great hands for the future."

I want to share some of the details behind that conclusion, because it reflects the work of our entire founding team over many months.

Safeguarding is one of the most rigorously scrutinised areas of any school assessment, and it's an area we set out to get right from day one. The assessor was clear about what they found:

"The school has taken a best practice approach to safeguarding and safer recruitment."

What stood out particularly was how early safeguarding thinking shaped our physical campus, not just our paperwork:

"The school should be commended for its foresight in adapting building plans early to prioritise safeguarding."

The same rigour is extended to how we hire. Every member of our team has been through a thorough, documented recruitment process, and the assessor's review of that documentation left no ambiguity:

"The evidence of procedure, documentation and policy submitted by the school is indicative of a deep commitment to safer and equitable recruitment."

"They should be commended for the time and care taken to implement rigorous safer recruitment practices."

Opening a new school demands systems, policies and clarity of purpose long before the first student walks through the door. The assessor's review of our planning noted:

"The school has demonstrated clarity of vision and purpose, alongside a systematic and detailed approach to both curriculum planning and the creation of coherent policies and protocols."

That extended to our full suite of policies:

"The school should be commended for developing a comprehensive suite of policies around curriculum, learning and teaching, assessment, pastoral principles and provision."

The assessor's site visits and virtual tours of our developing campus drew a confident endorsement:

"The campus being developed at QE Dubai Sports City promises to be an outstanding environment to learn in."

That environment has been designed with sustainability in mind from the very beginning:

"It is inspiring to see a new school focusing on sustainability from the outset."

Belle Wagner and Yasir Abrar have taken the lead in developing our approach to teaching and learning, and the assessor was struck by its originality:

"The Head of Prep shared the school's innovative and creative conceptual curriculum."

Beyond the classroom, our Flourish programme, spanning arts, sport, service and academic extension, was recognised as a strong foundation for school life:

"A wonderful initial offering for students across a wide range of areas."

Reports like this one are, in the end, a reflection of people, not paperwork. I've had the privilege of watching our team build this school from the ground up over the past year, and if there is one person whose fingerprints are on the curriculum highlights in this report, it's our Head of Prep, Belle Wagner, whose innovative and creative approach to the conceptual curriculum was singled out directly by the assessor.

The same is true of everyone who has joined us so far: the colleagues who wrote our policies, planned our classrooms, and sat through hiring processes as rigorous as the ones they now help run. The assessor's closing remarks were, in truth, a recognition of all of them:

"They have been enthusiastically relentless in their preparations for the opening of the school in August."

"Their attention to detail in the evidence they have provided has been excellent."

I'm proud to work alongside this team, and even prouder that an independent assessor saw in a few site visits and a stack of documents what I get to see every day.

This is a first step on a clearly defined quality assurance pathway set for us by QE Barnet, our founding school in the UK. Our quality assurance partner on this journey is a former Head of an HMC school, bringing years of first-hand experience at the top of UK independent education to the standards we are being held to here in Dubai. As part of our founding agreement, QE Dubai Sports City is required to meet, and exceed, a series of external benchmarks: beginning with this COBIS review, followed by inspection against the Department for Education's British Schools Overseas (BSO) standards, and underpinned throughout by our own internal quality assurance framework.

This layered approach is deliberate. It means that from our very first year, the school is held to the same standards of scrutiny, evidence and accountability that families would expect of any excellent British school from day one. This report is the first formal marker on that journey, and it gives us real confidence in what is to come.

Until next time, 
Dan Clark