Al Tharawat National Private School, Abu Dhabi

Al Tharawat National Private School delivers the UAE Ministry of Education (MoE) curriculum across the full school span — from KG through Grade 12 — making it one of 17 MoE-curriculum private schools in Abu Dhabi. Instruction is conducted in both Arabic and English, with Arabic as the primary language of learning. The school serves 1,713 students across KG, Cycle 1, Cycle 2, and Cycle 3, drawing predominantly from Sudanese, Yemeni, and Syrian communities in the Bani Yas area.

The school's most recent Irtiqa inspection, conducted in May 2025, rated overall performance as Acceptable — a regression from the Good rating awarded in 2022. Among MoE-curriculum private schools in Abu Dhabi, this places Al Tharawat in the lower performance tier: 10 of the 17 MoE schools in the city currently hold an Acceptable rating, with only 7 rated Good and none rated Very Good or Outstanding. The decline is broad-based, touching achievement, teaching quality, assessment, curriculum implementation, and leadership.

Subject performance is uneven across cycles. Islamic Education, Arabic, and UAE Social Studies remain the school's academic anchors, with attainment and progress rated Good across all cycles — a genuine strength in a school serving a predominantly Arab-speaking community. Arabic literacy has earned national recognition, including winning the Sweet Recitation Competition. By contrast, English, mathematics, and science attainment are rated Acceptable in KG, Cycle 1, and Cycle 2, recovering only to Good in Cycle 3. This gap between humanities and STEM subjects is a defining feature of the school's academic profile and a central concern for inspectors.

International benchmark data reinforces these concerns. In PISA 2022, 15-year-old students scored 355 in reading literacy (international average: 476), 391 in mathematics (international average: 472), and 401 in science (international average: 485) — falling short of the school's own targets in all three domains. TIMSS 2023 results placed Grade 4 and Grade 8 students below the intermediate international benchmark in both mathematics and science. The ACER IBT 2023–24 standardized assessment found that fewer than three-quarters of students in Cycles 1, 2, and 3 met curriculum standards in Arabic, mathematics, and science. The school has not yet conducted a systematic analysis of these results to identify and address curriculum gaps.

Inspectors identified teaching quality as a root cause of declining outcomes. Teaching for effective learning is rated Acceptable in KG and Cycle 1, with teachers demonstrating limited use of differentiation, play-based learning, and higher-order questioning. Assessment is rated Acceptable across all cycles, with the absence of robust procedures undermining the reliability of data used to inform planning. Curriculum design is coherent and MoE-aligned, but implementation prioritizes knowledge acquisition over skill development — a pattern that directly limits students' performance on applied international assessments.

Specialist provision exists in name but requires strengthening in practice. The school identifies Students of Determination (currently 6 students) and operates a Gifted and Talented program, but inspectors found identification and support for both groups to be insufficient. The library — holding 800 English books, 600 Arabic books, and 400 guided reading books — supports an active reading culture through the Reading Club, Library Friends program, and a recently launched electronic library. These initiatives are commendable, but the school lacks a structured annual reading plan and systematic teacher training in reading pedagogy.

For parents weighing this school against alternatives, the picture is one of cultural and values-based strengths set against measurable academic underperformance in core STEM and English subjects. The new leadership team has expressed commitment to improvement, but inspectors note that impact is not yet evident. Families prioritizing Arabic literacy, Islamic education, and UAE cultural grounding within an affordable fee structure will find genuine strengths here; those seeking strong outcomes in English, mathematics, and science should weigh the inspection evidence carefully.