The Dubai school making community part of its learning model to build deliberate connection for students across 98 nationalities
Nord Anglia International School Dubai (NAS Dubai), a British curriculum Early Year through to Sixth Form school in Dubai, UAE, is pioneering a reimagined model of community inclusion in one of the world’s most internationally diverse and fast-moving cities by embedding participation, belonging, and collective responsibility into every part of school life. In Dubai, families often come from vastly different cultural backgrounds, with many far from their home countries and communities. Language, traditions, and lived experiences all collide as expats from across the globe make this city their home, which can make the educational experience for youngsters feel fragmented and temporary, leaving them struggling to build lasting connections and really engage to their full potential.
Collaborations have connected students with organisations such as UNICEF, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and The Juilliard School, where they engage with global issues, technology, innovation, creativity, and social impact through real-world projects and experiences. The school’s partnership with UNICEF, in particular, supports student engagement with the Sustainable Development Goals and children’s rights initiatives, while collaboration with MIT provides access to technology and innovation programmes focused on solving practical challenges. The school also works closely across the wider Nord Anglia network, sharing ideas and best practices globally, while many partnerships emerge organically from within the school community itself, including the Uganda collaboration, which began through an existing community connection.
Home to approximately 3,100 students and 550 staff members representing 98 nationalities, NAS Dubai has intentionally built its model to include students, parents, staff and external partners, making them active participants and collaborative contributors to a shared community with the school as its defining cultural core. Opened in 2014, the school was founded with a mission to deliver a “learning experience like no other” through a model that combines academic ambition, wellbeing, student agency, and social responsibility. While it uses technology-enabled and future-focused learning approaches, its community model is deeply human, built around the idea that students learn best when they feel genuinely connected to the people and environment around them.
Community partnership is central to the school’s identity and is strengthened through its parent‑led class representative system, where learning experiences and wellbeing initiatives are co-delivered through structures like the Class Representative Network, Parent Ambassadors programme, and Parents’ Association. One of the clearest examples of this approach is the Chatter Box Café, a wellbeing and community hub for parents. Families volunteer their time, donate baked goods, host gatherings, and support local initiatives such as the Al Jalila PINKtober Foundation. The café has become a central meeting point where new families integrate into the school community, friendships form across cultures, and parents actively contribute to the school’s social purpose work. Our parent community continues to collaborate with NAS Dubai by giving their time to be exam invigilators, supporting students through the exam season offering a familiar face and nurturing environment.
Student leadership is embedded with the same level of intentionality. Through student councils, peer listener programmes, sports leadership, charity committees, digital leadership roles, and service-learning initiatives, they are given the opportunity to contribute directly to school wellbeing, culture, and community projects from Primary years through to Sixth Form. The school’s philosophy centres on the belief that students should feel capable of initiating change themselves, with the ethos that “there is something for everyone, and if not, you can start it”.
This culture of collaboration is most visible through the school’s Uganda Social Impact partnership with Bwindi Plus Orphanage School in southwestern Uganda, which supports 443 children, including 113 high school students. Through its approach, NAS Dubai transformed it into a whole-community learning experience where students, parents, and staff participated together in a 7–8 kilometre empathy walk at Dubai’s Kite Beach, intentionally mirroring the daily distances many Ugandan children travel to access water and education.
The community-first approach has also contributed to strong wellbeing and academic outcomes across the wider student body, with more than 90% of parents reporting that their children feel happy, safe, and secure within the school environment. Primary students achieve approximately 17% higher results in English, Mathematics, and Science progress tests compared to international benchmarks. NAS Dubai has also been recognised as one of the top 150 independent schools globally by the Spear’s Schools Index.
