GEMS Winchester School Fujairah becomes UAE’s first school to win prestigious GL Education award

Dubai, United Arab Emirates: GEMS Winchester School Fujairah (WSF) has been awarded the Advocate Partner Award from GL Education, to become the first school in the UAE and one of only two schools in the world outside the UK to achieve the prestigious educational award.

GL Education provides an essential service to schools in the UAE to allow for the effective testing and tracking of student progress and attainment.

The Advocate Partner Award recognises GEMS WSF’s expert use of the GL assessments through embedding this data into classroom practice and across the leadership team. Becoming an Advocate Partner gives GEMS WSF the tools to use the GL data most effectively, and to work towards improved outcomes for all students.

Amanda Clarke, International Director of GL Education, said: “It is a pleasure to welcome GEMS Winchester School Fujairah to the Assessment Excellence Programme, as an Advocate Partner.  We recognise the excellent work that the school is undertaking to embed a range of standardised assessments including CAT4, the Progress Tests and PASS. It is clear that crucial information about students is being shared with teachers, subject leaders and senior leaders, who can use this to support student learning and progress. We are really looking forward to working closely with the school as it develops its assessment practices further.”

David Wade, Principal of GEMS Winchester School Fujairah, said: “GL Education assessment data has helped our school achieve improved results for our students, thanks largely to the accurate target setting that we are able to accomplish in Grades 3 to 9. This helps teachers to identify areas to focus on and any potential barriers to learning. It also supports us to maintain high performance expectations for all our learners. A commitment to effective use of meaningful data in this way has also helped us to promote the UAE National Agenda within the school; it has become an integral part of what we do to provide the very best education possible for our wonderful community in Fujairah.”

Further testament to the effectiveness of the use of GL assessment data came in the form of record examination results in the IGCSE examinations in August 2021. Students at GEMS Winchester School Fujairah achieved 57 per cent at A* or A which is 27 per cent above the UK national average and ranks the school tied for third among the 20 very high-achieving GEMS British curriculum schools in the UAE that also posted record exam results this year.

For GEMS WSF, this is an even more remarkable achievement when you consider that 100 per cent of the IGCSE students do not consider English their first language; the school is made up of 81 per cent of Emirati students, with most of the remainder coming from other Arab nations.

To ensure that students are monitored effectively against UAE National Agenda parameters, GEMS WSF uses CAT4 (Cognitive Abilities Test) for grades 1, 4, 6, 8 and 10 in October every year. That test consists of four batteries: Verbal, Non-Verbal, Quantitative and Spatial for all grades. In addition, the school conducts GL Education Progress Tests in Maths, English and Science for grades 3 to 9 in May every year.