Teaching is a rewarding and varied career, every term, every day, every hour is different and full of surprises. Despite this, unique opportunities such as founding a brand-new school are hard to come by so we are excited, delighted and honoured to be the founding staff of The Aquila School.
The Aquila School will open in September 2018 serving a suburban community in Dubai called Dubai Land. Initially, open from FS1 to Year 4, the school will grow on a year by year basis to become a through school with 2000 students up to Year 13. In line with the vision of International Schools Partnership (ISP), The Aquila School will focus on one core aim, providing real learning for a real future through amazing learning. It will be a happy school that children love attending. Lessons will be active and engaging, and for all ages will promote children making genuine choices to guide their learning. The Aquila School will be truly inclusive. We will be a community school in the true sense of the word – especially in terms of learning communities.
Our curriculum will have a focus on design and technology – children making things, taking things apart and discovering how things work! The school will be stimulating and celebrate high quality work setting the standard for other children to aspire to. Music and singing will be high profile – children will sing every day and every child be able to learn to play an instrument. Every child will also learn to play chess! The focus from the early days will be on learning which is relevant to real life. Enquiry based projects such as mantle of the expert, whole school themed weeks and enterprise weeks will be a core of our ever-changing curriculum, which reflects the global diversity of the school community as well as celebrating the culture and heritage of the host nation.
Underpinning all of this is academic rigor. Teachers will be held to account to ensure that every child in their class makes as much progress as possible.
Kylie Cleworth has been appointed as Head of Primary, and we are lucky to be able to have 2 terms to work with the established ISP team to make the vision of the school become a reality. Kylie and I have worked together for the last 6 years and join ISP direct from the only primary school in Abu Dhabi to be graded as being outstanding in all areas. Naturally there will be things we take from our current school, but we are also keen to work with the school community to make The Aquila School different and unique. Although two terms sounds like a long time we are not naïve and are aware of the huge amount of work that will be needed to ensure that The Aquila School opens on time ready to provide our founding children with some amazing learning from day one.