School’s in on Saadiyat Island

Cranleigh Abu Dhabi has opened its doors to its first influx of students. The boarding school is the first to be built in the UAE capital and aims to bring the teaching ethos of its Surrey, UK, establishment to a new generation of children from the Emirates.

Children at Cranleigh Abu Dhabi on Saadiyat Island can enjoy an all-inclusive curriculum amid small class sizes, and better quality family time once the homework is done. Christopher Pike / The NationalShow less

It is the final lesson of the afternoon and the Year Five pupils in teacher Siobhan Bee’s life skills class are less than 30 minutes away from the end of their day.

The maths teacher has divided her class into small teams, assigning each an unremarkable object on which they have two minutes to prepare a business pitch and then present it to the rest of the class.

The exercise is designed to develop the students’ planning, negotiation and presentation skills, and Miss Bee reveals her inspiration as the lesson ends with a screening of the reality television programme Dragon’s Den and a discussion of each team’s merits.

After almost 43 hours of classes since the nine and 10-year-olds took the first class register of the week, they could be forgiven for flagging. But rather than winding down for the weekend, the atmosphere is fizzing.

It is the same in Anna McGarry’s lesson across the hall. Mrs McGarry, head of English, is giving a class on highwaymen. There is a lot of role play and the classroom is full of strained arms, raised high in the air in expectation of answering her questions.

When headmaster Brendan Law enters the room he is met with a hail of spontaneous, finger-fired shots and this, it would seem, is how Thursday afternoons generally play out at Cranleigh Abu Dhabi – not with a whimper, but a bang.

But if the pupils at Abu Dhabi’s newest school are enjoying the start of the academic year, it has proven more challenging for parents and teachers.

Construction delays meant Cranleigh started its classes two weeks after other schools, on September 14. The science block opened two weeks after that, while the indoor sports centre will not be ready until January.

The first week of school, on September 7, consisted of pupil and parent inductions at Manarat Al Saadiyat.

The Tourism and Development Investment Company-owned temporary exhibition building would be within walking distance of the school but is cut off by a thicket of construction barriers, temporary fencing and cranes.

For indoor sports such as basketball and volleyball, pupils are transported by bus to the new New York University Abu Dhabi campus, while activities such as sailing, drama and dance take place at The Club in Mina Zayed.

“We delayed opening by a week,” says Mr Law, a quietly-spoken South African.

“We could have pushed it but we didn’t want to start in a way that wasn’t as we mean to continue, which is with excellence in mind.

“Everything was driven by that. Because of our extended day and because we also run a much longer programme and with more built into our school day than at most schools, Adec [the Abu Dhabi Education Council] was comfortable with giving us a revised calendar.

“Holding back by a week won’t in any way impede the children’s education.”

The extended programme is one of the other features that distinguishes Cranleigh Abu Dhabi.

Depending on the age of the child, this means they can arrive at the school from 7am – when there is a breakfast club – until 6.30pm, or later if they are involved in an after-school performance or event.

The schedule has raised questions about the children’s ability to cope, but Mr Law says his school’s longer daytime breaks – half an hour each morning and afternoon, and an hour for lunch – combined with his pupils’ energy and enthusiasm – answer these concerns.

“A lot of people have said, ‘that’s a long day, those kids will be exhausted’,” he says.

“But our answer is that they have so much variety and so much stimulation that they’re ready for more.”

Mr Law says the energising mix comes from an all-inclusive curriculum that includes dance, robotics, golf, enterprise, debating, music lessons, survival skills and supervised homework lessons as part of the school day.

“Essentially, when a child leaves Cranleigh at 4.30pm – especially the younger ones up to Year Four – they will have done everything that a parent could wish for in terms of their academics, performing arts, creative arts and sport.

“Their parents won’t have to drive around town trying to find other things for their kids to do, plus the children will have their homework finished. They can be a family.”

The school’s all-inclusive offer, coupled with a commitment to small classes and facilities, such as sports pitches laid by grounds staff from the Sheikh Zayed Cricket Stadium, allows the headmaster to feel comfortable about the issue that concerns local parents most – Cranleigh Abu Dhabi is one of the most expensive schools in the UAE.

The parents of an FS1 or FS2 pupil pay Dh65,000 a year, a figure that rises to Dh75,000 in Year Two and Dh80,000 in Year Five, although this is still about half the fees of an equivalent private school in the UK.

“One of the things you are buying into when you come to Cranleigh is small class sizes, smaller than any other school,” says Mr Law, 47.

“From FS1 through to Year Four, which is class teaching-based, there will never be more than 18 children in a class.

“But rather than putting a price on your child’s education, put a value on it. That’s far more important, isn’t it?

“Look at the current education your children are receiving, and try to work out the value-for-money ratio.

“If you look at class size, at the quality of the campus, at the extensive opportunities and what I honestly believe are the best teachers in town, when you get that with a location that will have the museums within walking distance in a few years’ time, and already has the beach just down the road, I think that’s exceptional value.”

Although it will be the first boarding school in Abu Dhabi, Cranleigh will not be the first in the UAE. Repton School, another UK educational establishment, opened in Dubai in 2007.

The original Cranleigh School was established near the town of Cranleigh on the edge of the Surrey Hills in 1865. Its preparatory school celebrated its centenary in 2013.

A co-educational school with more than 900 pupils aged seven to 18, Cranleigh School prides itself on being a “local” boarding school that place a strong emphasis on family ties with its pupils.

Last year, 80 per cent of Cranleigh’s A-level students achieved A*-B grades – a record for the school.

Eight Old Cranleighans play professional rugby and the school also boasts 10 under-18 England teammates.

Famous Old Cranleighans include editor-in-chief of the Guardian newspaper Alan Rusbridger, the historian Andrew Roberts and the actress Julia Ormond.

Cranleigh Abu Dhabi headmaster Mr Law is a former governor of the Surrey school and was the founding headmaster at Brighton College Abu Dhabi. He has more than 20 years’ experience in private prep, junior and senior schools.

He repeatedly refers to the quality of the team he assembled soon after his appointment as Cranleigh Abu Dhabi’s headmaster in October last year.

More than 1,800 people applied for the 64 teaching posts and Mr Law says he conducted every interview personally at Cranleigh School in the UK and in Abu Dhabi.

Of the 116 staff who run the school, about 40 per cent come from, or have had prior experience of, the UAE, which Mr Law believes will help to define the school’s identity in its early years.

“They understand what it is like to live in the Middle East and they understand its cultural diversity. That’s a huge asset to a start-up school,” he says. “We’re not saying, ‘we’re the British and we know best’. We’re an international school that’s trying to draw on all of the excellence of Cranleigh in the UK while marrying that very closely with what we have here in the UAE.”

Mr Law admits that life at Cranleigh Abu Dhabi is not for every pupil or teacher, some of whom will have to live at the school’s 52-apartment accommodation block once work on the adjacent site is completed.

“My staff aren’t just here to teach lessons and go home,” he says. “There are plenty of teachers who want to do that and I had plenty of journeymen teachers who were using teaching as a ticket to go around the world, spending two years here and two years there.

“But we’re looking for teachers who want to be a very active part of the children’s lives and the bigger picture.”

That involves Cranleigh becoming Abu Dhabi’s first boarding school – a move Mr Law believes is already under way with the school’s extended day.

“What we’re leading towards longer-term is boarding. That will become very much a part of the fabric of Cranleigh, and the extended day is the first step towards that.

“The idea here is to try to create what is essentially a boarding community with a boarding ethos, but within the context of a day programme for those children who choose to be day pupils.”

The other part of Mr Law’s vision for Cranleigh is a catchment area that spans continents and is closely allied to TDIC’s future plans for Saadiyat Island’s real estate.

“I think we’ll be sought out by people from across the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council], from places like Saudi and Bahrain, who may want to buy some of the villas and apartments that will come on stream here,” he says.

“They may buy a villa and come over for the weekend so that their children can go ‘home’ to that villa on Saadiyat, where they’ll be able to spend family time on the beach.

“That whole GCC market is the next step and then beyond that there are people in places like Kenya that have to fly all the way to the UK to go to boarding school.

“Why go all the way to the UK when you can come half the distance and pay half the price to get a genuine, Cranleigh-level education here in Abu Dhabi?”