Frank Kane: Education and commerce can go hand in hand

Dubai International Academy is the first IB school to get the highest award from Knowledge and Human Development Authority, and should be congratulated.

My daughter Amira, 7, goes to Dubai International Academy, the school on the fringes of Emirates Hills (well, Al Barsha really) that just won an “outstanding” rating from the Knowledge and Human Development Authority.

Quite an achievement, really. DIA is an international baccalaureate continuum school, which means it offers the IB curriculum throughout a pupil’s time there, from kindergarten to school-leaving certificate.

It’s the first such IB school to get the highest award from KHDA, and should be congratulated.

It opened in 2005 and has since sent students to such august centres of learning as Yale, Princeton, Wharton, Columbia, Stanford, Cambridge and the London School of Economics. It’s run very well, I have to say, along strict academic and business lines. “Holistic, rigorous and international,” are the buzz words.

The school is owned by Innoventures Education, a commercial operation whose chief executive is Poonam Bhojani.

She gave thanks to the “supportive parent community, dedicated staff, an inspirational governing body and highly talented students”, in a little address yesterday. Nice.

Ms Bhojani is the wife of Avi Bhojani, a serial entrepreneur in the UAE who will need no introduction to media watchers here. He has been at the centre of media and advertising in the Arabian Gulf for more than 30 years, as head of BPG Cohn & Wolfe, one of the biggest media agencies in the region and part of the stable of WPP, the world’s biggest media company.

Avi has been a mover and shaker behind the scenes for many years.

He was one of the drivers of the Dubai Shopping Festival all those years ago, and then turned his attention to the knowledge economy.

What, and who, he doesn’t know in Dubai are not worth knowing. He’s often to be found in the Capital Club in the Dubai International Financial Centre, where he entertains with a rich fund of stories and anecdotes about life in the UAE.

I mention all this as background to the school, really, because I think it shows the benefit of an alliance between commerce and academia.

In the UK – where I went to school in the dim and distant past – any association between business and education is regarded with horror by many.

Education should be free and available to everybody as of right, the theory goes.

Business involvement is somehow tasteless, or a sign that you are seeking some unmerited privilege.

The UAE has no such hang-ups, and DIA’s success proves that a good school can also be a good business proposition.

Standards, facilities and personnel are high quality at DIA. Extra-curricular activities are excellent.

Just recently there was an International Evening where all the kids – and many of the teachers and parents too – dressed in their national costume to celebrate the diversity of the school, and what a wonderful event it was.

The school football pitch was a riot of colour and festivity, with food and music from every corner of the globe.

Those nice people at McGettigan’s even donated a huge pot of Irish stew, which went down a treat in the cool of the evening.

It was more like the United Nations general assembly than an educational establishment, and a great example of diversity in action.

Amira loved it, waltzing around in a long flowing emerald green dress my wife made specially for her, and proud to be “from Irish”, as she says.

I just think I’ll have to get them to focus on her grammar a bit more in the year ahead.

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