Dar Al Marefa Private School

Dar Al Marefa Private School is owned and governed by the Al Ghurair Group, one of the UAE's most prominent family conglomerates, with a Board of Governors chaired by Ibrahim Al Ghurair (Chairman) and Badr Al Ghurair (Chief Executive Officer). The board includes independent members with significant academic and professional credentials, among them Dr. Sonia Ben Jaafar, Dr. Nevine El Souefi, and Dr. Abdullah Al Khanbashi, lending the governance structure both local authority and international educational expertise. KHDA rated governance Good in the 2023–2024 inspection, with inspectors noting that governors ensure the school is well resourced, though they also flagged that self-evaluation processes do not yet provide leaders and governors with a fully accurate picture of school performance — an area requiring attention.

The school's principal at the time of the January 2024 KHDA inspection was recorded as Principal Naira Hamdy Aly Tahoun, appointed 1 January 2020. However, the school's current published leadership pages list Steven Giles as School Principal, indicating a leadership transition has occurred since the inspection. Parents should seek confirmation of the current principal's tenure directly from the school. The senior leadership team is broad and well-structured, with named phase leaders across every stage: Inas Al Derbashi as Head of Secondary, Tim Wade as Head of Primary, Sarah Khokhar Fraser as Head of Kindergarten, and Sahar Moosa as Head of Teaching and Learning, Innovation, among others. This depth of middle leadership is a meaningful signal of operational stability.

The effectiveness of leadership was rated Good by KHDA, with inspectors observing that school leaders share a commitment to developing students as well-rounded citizens. Parents and the community were rated Very Good — one of the stronger sub-ratings in the inspection — with parents described as strongly supportive and actively engaged, including through family reading initiatives. Management, staffing, facilities and resources were also rated Very Good, with inspectors confirming that staff are appropriately qualified and deployed effectively to match curriculum needs.

On teaching quality, KHDA found teaching rated Good across KG, PYP and MYP, and Very Good in DP. The inspection highlighted that the impact of teacher training is most clearly demonstrated in DP classes, while inconsistencies remain in the earlier phases — a recurring theme that forms part of the school's key recommendations. The school employs 110 teachers supported by 16 teaching assistants and 1 guidance counsellor. The largest nationality group among teachers is British and Irish. With 1,225 students across the school, this produces a student-to-teacher ratio of 1:12 — meaningfully better than the Dubai private school average of 1:13.6 across all curricula, and the school caps class sizes at 24 students. Among IB curriculum schools in Dubai, this ratio represents a genuine advantage in terms of individual attention. [MISSING: staff qualification percentage data — percentage holding Masters or above not available in sources]

The school's culture is anchored in Islamic values, which KHDA identified as one of the school's headline strengths. Students' personal and social development was rated Very Good across all phases, with DP students achieving Outstanding ratings for both understanding of Islamic values and social responsibility and innovation skills. The school has maintained a Good KHDA rating consecutively since 2013–2014 — a decade of consistent performance — though it has not yet broken through to Very Good, which remains the next milestone for leadership to target.