Dubai: The Swiss International Scientific School (SISD), Dubai’s first ever private boarding school to offer multi-lingual education in French, German, English and Arabic, is open for admission.
The Dh530 million school, which will be located in Dubai Healthcare City’s zone two, will offer the full International Baccalaureate (IB) continuum programme after opening in August. The school will be built as a low-energy building, consuming one-third of the energy of standard buildings. The cost reduction will be translated into savings that will fund academic scholarships for students in semester two of the first year of operation.
In its first phase, the school will accept admissions for pre-kindergarten through to grade 6 for the 2015-2016 school year.
Once the school is at full capacity, the 67,845sqm campus will be open to students from pre-kindergarten to Grade 12, catering to 2,442 pupils, including a boarding house for 350 students.
“The SISD IB programme will mirror Switzerland’s highly sophisticated and inclusive education system. From Grade one onwards, students in the bilingual sets will be immersed in a progressive environment where they will eventually study 50 per cent of their time in English and 50 per cent of their time in either French or German, with Arabic tuition too,” said Beat Sommer, the Head of the school, during a press conference held on Tuesday.
The school which has access to Dubai Creek will offer a range of water sports such as sailing, rowing and paddling. The school will also be equipped with an Olympic-sized swimming pool, basketball and tennis courts, football and rugby pitch, an indoor and outdoor running track, a climbing wall, a gymnasium and a multipurpose sports hall.
The school has received over 100 applications in just four weeks, which is 30 per cent of its target number.
SISD also announced Abdul Hamid Siddiqi of Siddiqi Investments as chairman and co-founder of the school.
