Visitors to Victory Heights Primary School (VHPS) will step into a true community primary school. Often, parents who visit the school will remark how similar the school feels to their own childhood memories - the principal who ensures she knows every child’s name through to the leadership team who are truly a part of the day to day operations of the school - constantly visible and engaging with children and their learning. They will see classrooms that feel alive and buzz with energy and enthusiasm - not through gimmicks but through children delighting in acquiring new knowledge and understanding. The school revels in its mantra that learning is, for the most part, ‘bread and butter’ with the occasional ‘fish and chips’ moment to inspire awe and wonder.
Yet whilst VHPS (as staff, children and parents will affectionately refer to the school) seemingly harks back to a bygone age, away from the glitz, glamour and scale of some other schools in the region - VHPS delivers on its vision to ‘Nurture, Challenge and Excel’. With consistently outstanding results in the core subjects of English, Maths and Science, where around 75 per cent of children consistently achieve the highest standards, as benchmarked against UK schools, and a showing in the recent round of TIMMS international benchmarking, which would make VHPS the envy of schools around the world. Children at VHPS leave after Year 6 in great shape for the next stage of their journey, having grown into confident, high achieving individuals, in a nurturing and caring small school environment.
VHPS also prides itself on its collegiality. Education in Dubai is not about self - it is about a shared ethos and increasing standards across the board so as to meet the lofty goals for education set out by the UAE’s visionary leadership. As a founder member of the UAE Research Schools Network, for example, VHPS promotes a research-informed approach to education, and shares the results of its own action research freely. So too, is collegiality emphasised, in the schools commitment to sharing best practice in small ‘cluster’ groups formed with other local schools - most recently looking at developing the provision of Arabic education.
