GEMS Education appoints innovation director

Dubai: GEMS Education, the UAE’s biggest private school group, has appointed Jeffrey Beard as Group Director for Innovation. Beard will lead the development of innovative international education programmes and global teaching= at GEMS. He served as CEO of the International Baccalaureate (IB) for the past eight years, overseeing its transformation into one of the fastest-growing international education curricula across the world. IB’s programmes are taught in almost 3,700 schools across the world, with almost 1.2 million pupils registered in 2014. Beard was appointed director-general of the IB in 2006 after a career in international agribusiness at several multinational corporations. (Staff Report)