Looking for school for your kids? Help at hand

Mark Gleason, a British national, moved to Dubai about two months back. He has two kids – one school going and the second one soon to be ready for pre-school.

“I was so new to Dubai and had no clue about the schooling system in the city. My family comes here in the summers and I just relied on advice of colleagues and information passed by word-of-mouth,” he said. But to his good luck, he stumbled upon a website during a random school search on the Internet and found all the information that he was looking for.

A dedicated website, www.whichschooladvisor.com, on all school-related queries is becoming popular in the country. First-of-its-kind in the UAE, as claimed by its founders, this website maintains to have the necessary information that a parent might need when considering her/his child’s schooling in the country.

Indeed, the site can be of great help, especially for expatriate parents who are new to the country and are looking for information on schools before shortlisting the right one for their kids.

“There is a lot of information on the website. There are several reviews on schools, information on waiting lists, fees and registration that a parent may want to know,” James Mullan, co-founder of WhichSchoolAdvisor.com, told Emirates 24|7.

“There are guides that can help parents on selecting the right curriculum. We compare different curriculums – for example – IB versus O and A levels,” he adds.

In fact, the site isn’t limited to schools but also includes pre-schooling, with information on a number of nurseries across the country.

“Besides schooling, there is a lot of information on nurseries as well for parents with little ones. We have brought our combined expertise as web developers, educationalists, communications professionals and parents to create a site that helps parents in the country,” maintains Mullan.

“Many UAE parents want to take advantage of the city’s varied school options but feel they need better information. This website seems a one-stop shop for information and quality ratings on the vast majority of schools in the country,” said Sonia M, a Spanish national living in Dubai.

The website is being populated on a daily basis with information on schools in all the emirates in the UAE. However, there is no individual service that it caters to. That is, it doesn’t offer private advice specific to your particular search, but offers a guiding tool which can be a very good starting point for your kids’ school search.

“There is no individual service but the site is loaded with a lot of quality information. However, if the readers have a particular query, we will be very happy to answer them. Queries of general importance can be found in our FAQ section,” says Mullan.

The best part of the website is that it’s all for free. “At the moment, there is no charge. However, there will be a charge for premium content at a later stage but still the vast amount of information will be free.

“We have been doing this for the past 11 months but somebody will have to eventually pay for it and we will be happy to invest the revenue in improving the website further,” explained the co-founder of the site.


 

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