The younger generation is much smarter and is equipped with all the required facilities to take the world forward. However, the world is moving at an unprecedented speed, and it is making all the difference in the way we imagine a child’s future.

To take the world forward, along with formal education, there are many things that a child needs to understand and develop. Though most schools, parents and even educators believe that indulging students in personalised learning—in the current educational paradigm—is way ahead of time, but grooming students into such a personalised learning culture will allow them to choose their field of interest and will launch them into their aspiring careers.

Personalised learning has been persuaded by schools to be included in their curriculum. Still, it has been a daunting task to constantly monitor and advance with a holistic approach for most of them.

One such school that has successfully adapted to personalised learning is Deira Private School. Being a growing secondary school, the Deira Private School aims to help students maximise their true potential and help them lead a happy life in a happy community.

Start of School’s Transformation Journey

Primarily established as a primary school, the Deira Private School was established in 2009. However, with the recent change in school management, some big changes are afoot for the school.

The new management has brought in huge investment from Chubby Cheeks Nurseries, and some significant improvements are seen in the school’s ecosystem. The most noticeable improvement brought in is that the school is now expanded to Year 7 from the current academic year 2021-2022.

Also, the school has grown incredibly from 170 students to 690 students, and the school has improved its infrastructure for providing better growth aspects to its students. “We have very well-resourced facilities like Sports Fields, Multipurpose Hall, Science and ICT Labs, Ecolab and Forest School, Music, Dance and Green Room, STEAM Facilities, dedicated Sensory and Speech Therapy rooms and a well-being centre,” the school management added.

The secret behind the school’s rapid growth is its vibrant environment. The school has combined its core values with innovative teaching that blended perfectly with the school infrastructure and facilities. Along with that, the school has streamlined its subject expertise in the school with specific subject heads and year heads that aim to channel students’ focus and ensure that every child feels valued, celebrated and happy.

“The school grew incredibly well and credit to most of its improvement goes to newly appointed Principal, who holds a vast experience in leadership and management in July 2021, it is the last mentioned’s vision and leadership that have seen the school grow to promising prominence,” the school management added.

Ad Vitam Paramus – Preparing for Life

Deira Private School proudly informs the parents that it is a Futuristic British Curriculum School that focuses on building a happy community. Along with that, the school aims for overall development by helping students to develop character and prepare them for life. The school has imbibed character education in its curriculum because it allows the student to become Competent, Conscious, and Committed to doing the right thing. The school offers a family-oriented approach in its teachings in the world-class schooling setting.

Vision: Building Character, One Virtue at a Time

Building the Future, One Student at a Time

Mission: The school is on a mission to develop well-rounded, confident, and responsible individuals who have unlocked their full potential. Deira Private School aims to achieve this by providing the students with a welcoming, happy, safe, and supportive learning environment on the school campus where everyone is treated equally.

“We believe, a happy child is a successful child and we intend that all children should enjoy learning, while achieving their potential and become independent life-long learners. Our school empowers all students to embrace learning, achieve their personal best and build their emotional, social and physical well-being. We aim to educate all students to the highest levels of academic achievement to enable them to reach and expand their potential. We are prepared to train our students to be successful, confident, responsible, and innovative members of society,” higher authorities at the school added.

Attitudes and Attributes

Transforming School with Effective Leadership

Soon after taking over the position of the Principal at the school, Ms. Ritika Anand has given the school a whole new look. Being a dynamic educator, Ms. Ritika Anand and her incredible leadership qualities bring in an exceptional experience of fourteen long years. Being an exceptional leader, she held various leadership positions in well-established British Curriculum schools in Dubai.

Her inspiring learning experience through inclusive and innovative learning techniques has completely transformed Deira Private School in the academic year 2021-2022. She holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry and started her teaching career teaching University students in India. She moved on to IGCSE, providing quality education to AS and A level students in Dubai.

She is a prominent leader who aims for perfection and is focused on developing the students’ academic skills and helping them hone their wonderful personalities through exciting and engaging events and activities.

Personalised Learning and Teaching Model

Deira Private School (DePS) has priorities maximising each student’s potential since its establishment. To help students realise their interests and help them in mastering them, the school has adopted the personalised learning and teaching model. This model also allows the school to achieve its long-term goal that focuses on inculcating leadership qualities in students and increasing parental engagements to support students to have a well-maintained home-school balance and community involvement so that the world becomes a happy community.

Futuristic Educational Institution that Sets them Apart

Being a truly inclusive school with a triggered growth, the school has turned into a futuristic educational institution that hones students’ skills and encourages them to choose the field of their interest and excel at it. “DePS follows the Early Years Foundation Stage curriculum primary stage two grade and the National Curriculum for England for students from Year one through to Year 7. DePS offers an enriching program to its students, brining literacy, science, engineering, mathematics, technology, arts and sports. There is also a very strong languages programme where students study French as well as Arabic,” says Ms Ritika Anand.

Adapting to Modern Ways of Learning

Emphasising on the modern ways of learning, the Principal of the school says, “E-learning has been a part of the curriculum from the day one of the school this academic year and children are using apps such as quizzes, polls, Collins Connect, Classkick, Padlet, Class dojo worksheets, MS forms, etc. along with effective and critical questioning, is used and aligned to year-appropriate curriculum content and higher-order thinking skills are inculcated in children.”

Transformative Engagement Model

DePS has worked hard and implemented a transformative student engagement model, which works on all the factors that drive maximum student engagement. This engagement model helps the student in their overall personality development by assisting them in completing their growth arc in emotional, behavioural and cognitive factors. Pressing on this unique engagement developed by the school, the Principal says, “At any event at a class level, year group or key stage level, children are supported, motivated, rewarded and reminded of their participation. They are followed up and given support so that 100% participation can be achieved.”

Equipping Students for their Bright Future

Despite being a growing secondary school, DePS has adapted to their school’s personalised learning model to motivate children to set a goal and work towards it. “Children in every lesson are provided with a learning menu so that they can make choices. Students across all phases are highly motivated and are enterprising learners. They contribute significantly to reflect, evaluate and improve the schools’ provision in various capacities and meaningfully enhance the experiences of their peers by facilitating and leading various clubs and workshops,” says Ms Ritika Anand.

With such an intuitive learning model, students can now demonstrate a highly developed ability to transfer learning between different subjects and apply their inter-curricular learning to real-world and hypothetical problems in familiar and unfamiliar contexts.

Talking about preparing students for the future, Mr Ritika Anand says, “They seek and cherish new and creative connections as evident in the numerous interdisciplinary events and lessons. With a high level of personalised care and guidance, students feel equipped to make informed choices. From year eight onwards, we will start with career assemblies for parents and students as well as taster lessons to introduce to new subjects for options in IGCSE.”

Notable Achievements and Awards

The Deira Private School has immensely grown under its new management. The school grew incredibly well in strength, becoming a family of more than 690 students from 170 in just a year. Apart from that, here are some of the noteworthy achievements of the school:

• Dubai Schools Games: Chess Championship
• Emirates Literature Festival Poetry Writing Contest
• Chevron Readers Cup – Emirates Literature Foundation
• Education 2.0 Outstanding Leadership Award

Continuing to Help Students Maximise their Potential

Explaining the future plans of the Deira Private School, Ms Ritika Anand says, “We are very sure that DePS will continue to be the school of choice for high quality, genuinely inclusive, futuristic British Curriculum Education in UAE where all students and staff will feel valued, cared for and progressing to maximise their potential. We aim to develop into secondary school with a wide variety of curricular choices.”

Testimonials

• It’s the best community I can trust to build my kid’s personality and prepare them for the life journey -Ali Family
• Best thing I like about Deps School is their prompt response to any of queries posted by the parents and of course I want to appreciate superb online teaching for both of my kids. Thanks so much to the teachers and management.
• Wazir Family
• I have been with Deira private school now for 4 years, it has a very good teachers with good management, I can say that their CEO is personally following up if there a concern related to my kids.
• Alabdali Family
• Always striving! The teachers and assistants are caring, stern, loving and always there for the students. They have the determination, skill, and passion to teach.
• Al Ali Family
• The school is very supportive and cooperative with parents, they have shown support throughout my child’s engagement in the school, with regards to all issues we have faced personal, and work related the school have given all the assistance needed.
• Al Mansoori Family