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About Our School
GEMS International School – Al Khail is a dynamic, forward-thinking school that offers
students an enriched curriculum taught by a highly qualified and professional teaching
faculty. Our students come from a wide variety of backgrounds and cultures and our
school has over 100 nationalities with no dominating nationality on its campus, making
the school truly international. We believe that the diversity of our student and parent
groups provides the foundation for creating involved global citizens who have the capacity
and the determination to make a difference in our rapidly changing world. By engaging
with diversity and through reflection, our students develop deeper understandings of
themselves, so that they embrace difference, and experience increasing intellectual
freedom – all necessary precursors to international-mindedness and global citizenship.
Our Mission
GEMS International School – Al Khail provides a school experience that is happy, meaningful
and purposeful. Our Program of Inquiry sustains students’ natural curiosity and the
desire to learn while promoting integrity along with understandings and skills to make a
difference. Our approach ensures that students will enter the next phase of their lives
with strong core values and the skills and attributes to make a positive difference in the
world around them.
Philanthropy - Schools with a conscience
Through the four core values of GEMS, our schools
are heavily focussed on philanthropy. They are schools
with a conscience. Each has their own charitable
activities that fall under the Varkey Foundation.
Students are taught the real meaning of compassion.
For every student enrolled at a GEMS School one
hundred underprivileged children will be impacted.
The Foundation’s aim is to support 10 million children
globally.
We are proud to say that over the past 55 years, GEMS
students, teaching staff and corporate staff have
raised over $40m USD for charities around the world.
GEMS International Schools
The sheer diversity of nationalities in GEMS
International schools provides students with a unique
international understanding through interaction and by
studying and experiencing other cultures and belief
systems. This global cross cultural experience is
extended further through a special initiative where
GEMS students are linked, via video-conferences,
to students in non-GEMS schools around the globe.
GEMS provides education to students in Europe, Africa,
North America, Asia and the Middle East. Many GEMS
parents are aspirational, career minded professionals
so the GEMS network of schools provides parents with
the opportunity to transfer their children from one
GEMS school to another as their circumstances change.
Education Expertise
GEMS has selected a team of world renowned
educators to ensure it delivers global best practice
in the field of education. These include leaders
who have excelled in education reform, curriculum
development and teaching and learning practices.
They are unequalled in international experience and
include individuals who have established schools all
over the world.
All GEMS teachers have access to the GEMS
Professional Development programme which is
one of the largest, most comprehensive in-house
programmes of its type in the world. Over 150 senior
academics are trained in international accreditation,
inspection methodologies and school self-evaluation.
Advisors
GEMS Education is supported by a network of
eminent, international advisors which include
world leaders and experts who are “game –
changers” and influencers on the global stage.
GEMS Education has strategic partnerships with
the Clinton Global Initiative, the Tony Blair Faith
Foundation, the World Economic Forum and Microsoft.
Parent Engagement
GEMS is also leading the world by becoming the
first educational organization of its type to introduce
a parent engagement strategy into all its schools.
International research is clear. The biggest single
reason a child does well in their education is when
their parents take a real, active and consistent interest
in what they are learning in school at home. Research
suggests that a parent who is actively and consistently
engaged with their child can add the equivalent of two
to three years of extra education to that student over
a school career. When parents are engaged children
get better grades, have fewer discipline problems
and are more likely to be successful in their lives.
History
In 1959, two teachers, KS Varkey and his wife Mariama,
arrived in Dubai. At the time, Dubai was a burgeoning
trade center on the Arabian Gulf. The Varkey family
had left Kerala, India to seek a better life for their
family. What they found was a real need to educate
children arriving in the city from around the world.
Their son, Sunny, added a visionary’s ambition to a
practitioner's experience. From simple roots in a family
of teachers, GEMS Education, is today an international
company with schools and education services in
19 countries. We still share the same mission - to
put quality education within the reach of every
child and student.