'BAKIS vision is to raise a resilient generation to succeed' says Rania Amaireh

1. As the school’s new principal, where do you see Beaconhouse Al Khaleej International School standing now?

I joined Beaconhouse Al Khaleej as the school principal in November 2021. As I was the school vice-principal for the last two years, it gave me the advantage to continue working on all the valuable initiatives that had been started earlier. The culture of Beaconhouse was very familiar and the team’s engagement to achieve targeted objectives was very uplifting.  We had worked hard during the last few months to ensure the quality of teaching and learning is up to the international core standards. Our hard work was rewarded with the GOOD rating that we had received during the last IRV visit by SPEA and Sharjah regulators in May 2022.

BAKIS is an international school with a modern and high-standard vision. We have built a culture of ownership amongst all our community members, where everyone is taking ownership to improve the school constructively. Our open-door policy encourages all our stakeholders to be part of our journey. We all want to see Beaconhouse Al Khaleej among the best schools in UAE. This target is very clear and well communicated. We set targets, distribute tasks, provide a timeline to achieve the goals, then move to new targets. It is a continuous process of improvement. We dream big, work hard and achieve.

2. What are your plans for the upcoming year?

Getting back to normal Teaching – Learning is a boon for our learners. We finally can have our extra-curricular activities more rigorously with all the required measures. On-campus celebrations, events, and competitions have already started. We will continue to engage our learners in social and well-being activities so they can catch up with what they had missed during the pandemic years.

Productive Events such as Beaconhouse Talks, Science Fair, and Multicultural Days will continue on a bigger scale. Moreover, other new initiatives and activities will be planned to improve our learners’ confidence, communication, and wellbeing.

Next year, we are launching our official Advanced Placement (AP) teaching sessions on Campus. We have engaged our high school teachers in comprehensive training to be ready to teach these high-level courses. This will allow our students to select the right academic pathway as per their interests. Advance and Élite pathways are within the options that we will offer our Beaconites, for the next academic year.

This is a continuity of our high school education improvement plan. As a certified College Board Testing Centre, we are committed to providing the best high school education to our students, currently ranging from 9th to 12th graders.

In addition to the above, we again have major infrastructure plans to improve our school environment and create new innovative spaces for learning. Students’ Lounge, expansion of KG section, and new playgrounds are some examples of these projects.

3. While schools are back to normal days, what schools focus should be on?

I believe, the main focus should be maximizing well-being and increasing the opportunities to meet face-to-face, collaborate, communicate, reflect and actively engage in the group activities.

Our growing generation is now dominated by screen-agers and we need to shift them back to normal ways of conversation offline. We all need to go back and fulfil these psychological needs of Maslow such as the feeling of belongingness and dear relationships through social activities.

The sooner we are back to student-centered teaching strategies and on-campus engaging activities, the more we will be able to build confidence in public speaking and team spirit skills amongst our learners.

4. What is your vision when it comes to Beaconhouse Al Khaleej International School?

When I started leading BAKIS, I had the chance to communicate our vision with everyone. We conducted many learning and discussion sessions to decide the type of Beaconite learners we want to develop. I believe that it is our role as educators to shape our children’s soft skills in addition to their academic skills. Therefore, we agreed on some values and learning dispositions that our learners need to acquire to become successful global citizens.  Our vision is to raise a resilient and determined generation to succeed, take the risk and make mistakes while learning from these mistakes also; and seek and give feedback while engaging in reflective discussions.  We have decided on different approaches to integrating these values into our daily school life. Teachers, students and parents will be part of workshops to instil these values in our community.

5. What is unique about Beaconhouse Al Khaleej International School?

Beaconhouse Al Khaleej is part of Beaconhouse Education Group, which was established in 1975 and has almost 308,000 full-time students in seven countries. It is possibly the largest school network of its kind in the world. As we are part of this prestigious organization, we are committed to our parents to provide the utmost standard of education to their children. We believe in the partnership with our parents and the whole community for the best of our school. Therefore, anyone who visits BAKIS can sense the family spirit and the happy vibes once you enter our front desk area. This is something that we frequently hear from our visitors and parents!

Furthermore, we follow the latest trends in education to ensure that our teaching and learning practices are up to date and aligned with the 21^st century skills.

So let me summarize it by saying that, “We are a school with high expectations and happy community”.