Dubai: UAE-based GEMS Education school group will welcome 15,000 new students and 1,300 new teachers across its schools in the UAE on August 29 for the new academic term.
In total, GEMS will be educating more than 120,000 students at 43 schools in the UAE, staffed by some 7,000 teachers.
Dino Varkey, CEO of GEMS Education, said: “At GEMS Education, the start of a new term is always an exhilarating time, and this [coming] term is especially charged with anticipation and excitement as our new staff and students from around the world join the growing GEMS family.”
He added: “We have invested substantially in upgrading school facilities during the summer break to build on our world-class level of physical and digital provision across our schools. This summer we’ve focused on our through-school provisions ensuring that our offering from nursery to post-16 is even richer at every stage.”
Vaccination drive
Elmarie Venter, COO at GEMS Education, said: “With the UAE at the forefront of the global vaccination drive, we can confirm that 8,843 students of our schools aged 12 and above have already been protected through the GEMS vaccination drive with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, and additional campaigns will be conducted early in the new term to cover the remaining eligible students.”
GEMS, she added, has achieved a vaccinated rate of 98.6 per cent of eligible staff across all its schools. “We will ensure that our 1,300 new teachers similarly will have received their vaccines to further support our mission to ensure all our schools are as safe as possible.”
Induction event
GEMS Education is gearing up for its annual induction event, GEMS Awareness Day (August 26), where new teachers, many of whom have relocated to the UAE, will hear from GEMS’ senior leadership team and educationalists. The new intake of teachers span the full range of year groups from kindergarten to post-16, and cover Indian, British and US curricula.
