Abu Dhabi: Aldar Academies has announced two new schools by September 2016.
The schools – an all-girl secondary school in Al Mamoura and an American curriculum school on Yas Island – will have a capacity of 1,800 students each.
Registrations are open and the the fee is expected to be around Dh40,000 annually, on par with six other existing Aldar schools.
Huge demand
Mohammad Khalifa Al Mubarak, chairman of Aldar Academies, said there is a huge demand for high quality schools in Abu Dhabi and Aldar schools are already oversubscribed.
“These new schools also continue to forward the development of Aldar Academies’ vision: creating a new excellence in education, combining the best of international learning techniques, enriched Arabic content and providing the best equipped and trained teachers across the GCC,” said the chairman.
The school on Yas Island will be the first to adopt the American curriculum in the Aldar Academies network and will cater to the residential development of Yas West. The kindergarten to Grade 12 co-ed school will offer the Massachusetts State curriculum.
The school in Al Mamoura will be a mixed primary and girls-only secondary school, offering the English National Curriculum, as well as the International Baccalaureate Diploma Prog-ramme for years 12 and 13.
Boarding schools
Nilay Ozral, chief executive officer of Aldar Academies, said there is a huge demand for girls-only secondary schools as more than 50 to 60 per cent of parents prefer these to co-eds.
Al Mubarak said Aldar has plans to open boarding schools in Abu Dhabi. “We are studying the market in the region to understand the scope of a high quality boarding school in Abu Dhabi,” he said.
According to the Abu Dhabi Education Council, the private education sector will have 280,000 students by 2020.
Currently, there are 187 private schools with a combined strength of around 230,000.
