Academic Ethos

Our Ethos and Values

FirstPoint School is an exceptional school where we combine British academics and heritage with an international perspective to inspire our children to achieve excellent academic success through innovative and creative approaches to learning.

At FirstPoint School, we see the opportunity to educate other people's children as a rare privilege, bringing with it a huge responsibility to provide the best all-round education possible as we aim to prepare young people for happiness and success in their adult lives. At FPS, we take this responsibility extremely seriously. We care about the individual and pride ourselves in the warmth of a community in which all our pupils feel valued.

For us, our families and our children will always come first. we are a community - where children will achieve and fulfil their inherent potential and where they will also be valued and known as an individual.
We live in exciting and fast changing times and this means that providing an outstanding, progressive and well-rounded education is more important than ever. There are many aspects which make education and provision at FirstPoint first-class.

High Performance Learning

At FPS we prioritise High Performance in all that we do. As an HPL school we are very clear about exactly how we create a culture of high performance. Through using cognitive science HPL demystifies the process to becoming a high performer. The VAAs guide us to consider how high performers behave and the ACPs guide us to the ways that high performers think.

Advanced Cognitive Performance Characteristics ACPs Progression Chart
Values Attitudes and Attributes of High Performers

- High academic performance is attainable for everyone.
- We can systematically teach students how to be ‘intelligent’ and how to succeed in school.
- HPL schools produce students that are both intellectually and socially confident, poised to succeed in higher education, their future careers, and the world of tomorrow.

Every department in secondary has a vision statement designed to inspire High performance learning amongst all our students. These statements are designed to inspire learning and motivate students to improve in each of their subject areas, and have a goal to aspire towards, and develop and understanding of the skills necessary to be hugely successful learners.

Curriculum Design

Our unique curriculum is designed around our whole-school, through-school model and provides an ambitious, progressive and personalised pathway for all of our students. Our curriculum provides coherence, balance and breadth, generating an appetite for learning and discovery in our students, and encouraging them to develop strong cultural awareness, a determination to be an influence for good, and a capacity for work, leadership and collaboration.

Centres of Excellence

We have centres of excellence in Digital Industries, Leadership and Golf.

Premium Facilities

Our premium facilities are enjoyed by all our students, and we are located in a quiet, scenic part of Dubai, bordering The Villa Community.

At FPS, we see it as our responsibility to bring out our children’s gifts and talents, to broaden their interests and to develop their personal qualities. To do this we have developed our curriculum and school ethos around our FPS values. Our FPS values have helped us to establish an education and ethos which fosters:

• confidence, perseverance and tolerance;
• communication and teamwork skills which encourages children to embrace collaboration, creativity and innovation in the pursuit of personal and collective excellence;
• respect for individuality, difference, the importance of teamwork and the contribution that each child makes to the life of the school and the community;
• an open-minded and outward-looking mentality so that our children are ready to make a really positive contribution to their wider community.

FirstPoint is rapidly evolving and developing as a school and we committed to continuing to develop FPS as an institution of international standing – so that it occupies a unique position in the UAE’s educational landscape.
Over the past few years, we have continued to establish GEMS FPS as a truly outstanding school which works to achieve our aims by continuing to focus on our families and our children.
We have also been:
-investing significantly in the core areas of the curriculum and co-curriculum
- developing our campus
- improving our premium facilities
- providing more personalised pathways
- expanding our Centre of Excellence and Industry Links
- offering a first-class education for all