At Newlands School Dubai learning is at the heart of everything that we do. We are passionate in ensuring that we enable every child to achieve their potential, both inside the classroom; and through our programme of extra-curricular activities. Students gain an excellent quality British education in a values-based, internationally-minded environment so that they may understand, contribute to, and succeed in an ever-developing and competitive world. Supporting students to develop key skills like cooperation, collaboration, communication and critical thinking are an important part of our educational ethos. Our focus is to help children learn and grow as we want our students to thrive in an ever-changing world.

At Newlands, we build innovation into the curriculum through a mixture of subject initiatives and cross-curricular opportunities. In both Primary and Secondary, students:

• tackle open-ended challenges and experience problem-solving which calls for innovative solutions in the subject curriculum
• contribute as digital authors, using mixed media presentation and audio and video editing tools, to build their own ‘digital essays’ on issues of the day
• are invited to participate in competitions and team challenges
• take part in activities they nominate themselves to improve the school site and operations
• undertake team, leadership, outdoor challenge and entrepreneurial activities in every year group
• take part in global communications and exchanges which bring them into contact with global diversity

In the Primary section, many of the activities and challenges are simulations, where imagination and creativity are the prime areas of interest. In the Secondary section, there is more emphasis on real-world challenges (such as starting a business) and on design-and-make activities which can be tested for viability as well as imagination.
 
New technology tools are used throughout the school, with projectors and smart screens in all classrooms. The school coordinates, curates and checks online resources so that technology use is both commonplace and safe. The preferred mode for students is for them to be digital authors more than passive recipients of online content and the school encourages each subject department to nominate software applications that allow students to practice their knowledge and skills thoroughly, with active feedback.