Modern Skills School
Executive Summary
The overall quality of education provided by Modern Skills School is Acceptable. The school demonstrates strengths in students' achievement in Islamic Education and their awareness of Islamic values and Emirati culture. High school students show good progress in most subjects.
The school maintains secure health and safety arrangements and robust child protection procedures. Communication with the school's community and partnerships with parents are successful. However, the overall quality of teaching is inconsistent, and more capable students are not consistently challenged.
Leaders prioritize academic success, wellbeing, and inclusion, but self-evaluation lacks rigor, and improvement plans focus more on action completion than outcomes. There is a need to develop consistently high-quality teaching and learning across all subjects and phases, particularly for boys, and to improve the use of assessment data for challenging lessons.
Overall School Performance
Outstanding
Very Good
Good
Acceptable
Weak
Very Weak
Modern Skills School Overall Rating
Acceptable for 13+ consecutive years
Dubai Focus Areas
These three pillars represent the Dubai education authority's priorities: ensuring inclusive practices, prioritizing student wellbeing, and meeting UAE National Agenda targets.
The school fosters an inclusive ethos, with qualified senior leaders accountable for students of determination. Appropriate plans and policies are consistently applied, supported by adequate resources like learning laboratories and a sensory room. Parents are kept informed, and the curriculum is modified to engage students of determination in relevant learning opportunities, leading to good progress from their starting points. students of determinationinclusive ethoslearning laboratoriessensory roomgood progress
Modern Skills School shows a strong commitment to wellbeing, led by a qualified senior team with clear policies and systematic data collection. Stakeholders, including students and parents, are actively engaged, and staff receive supportive training. Curriculum initiatives effectively promote student wellbeing, fostering engagement, resilience, and character development in a positive classroom climate. strong commitment to wellbeingqualified senior teamstakeholders actively engagedpositive classroom climateengagement, resilience and character development
The school's outcomes in international assessments like PIRLS, mathematics, and science benchmarks show a weak judgment with negative trends. Leaders are aware of PISA, TIMSS, and PIRLS proficiency levels and have analyzed benchmark results, implementing curriculum modifications and literacy action plans. However, the impact of these plans needs to be monitored to ensure improvements, especially for boys, and better preparation for benchmark testing is required. International AssessmentPIRLSTIMSSPISAliteracy action plansbenchmark testing
Key Highlights
Standout achievements identified by the inspection team that distinguish this school.
High School Progress
High school students demonstrate good progress across the majority of their subjects, indicating effective learning in the upper phases.
Islamic & Emirati Culture
Students show strong achievement in Islamic Education and a commendable awareness of Islamic values and Emirati culture.
Safety & Protection
The school maintains robust health and safety arrangements alongside effective child protection procedures, ensuring a secure environment for all students.
Community & Parents
Communication with the school community is successful, fostering strong and productive partnerships with parents.
Academic Performance Breakdown
The overall quality of education provided by the school is acceptable. Students achieve well in Islamic Education across the school, with good progress in high school for most subjects. Progress in Arabic as a first language is good in Elementary, and in English and mathematics in KG. However, progress in English and mathematics remains acceptable in Elementary and Middle schools. Students' learning skills are stronger in KG and High.
Leadership & Management
Effectiveness of school governance, strategic planning, and leadership capacity to drive continuous improvement.
Leadership Approach
Leaders at Modern Skills School prioritize academic success, wellbeing, and inclusion. While instructional leaders are developing teaching methodologies, their focus has not yet fully extended to students’ outcomes. Self-evaluation processes lack rigor, with improvement plans often emphasizing the completion of actions rather than measurable results. Although stakeholders' perspectives inform governance, there is an underutilization of data to effectively challenge leaders. The school faces challenges with varying staff qualifications, some struggling to deliver the curriculum, and crowded classrooms impacting teaching and learning.
Inspection Findings
Students' Outcomes
Students achieve well in Islamic Education across all phases, with good progress in high school for most subjects. Progress in Arabic as a first language is good in Elementary, and in English and mathematics in KG. However, progress in English and mathematics remains acceptable in Elementary and Middle schools. Students’ learning skills are stronger in KG and High, though critical thinking and independent learning lack rigor overall.
Personal Development
Students exhibit positive attitudes, responsibility towards learning, and strong behavior and relationships across all phases. They demonstrate a secure understanding of safe and healthy living, and Islamic values are well understood, fostering respect and appreciation. Students value UAE heritage and culture, show respect for other cultures, and engage in community service, innovation, and sustainability initiatives. However, attendance, though slightly improved, remains too low.
Teaching Quality
Teachers demonstrate good subject knowledge, with a majority understanding how students learn best, but the overall quality of teaching is inconsistent. While some teachers adapt to individual needs, more capable students are not consistently challenged, and critical thinking and independent learning lack rigor. Assessment data is increasingly used to modify teaching and track progress, but opportunities for self- and peer-assessment are still developing.
Protection & Care
Leaders prioritize child protection with clear procedures and effective measures against cyberbullying and bullying, ensuring emotional safety. The campus is secure with ongoing risk assessments, and healthy living is promoted by medical staff. Positive relationships aid behavior management, and the school is inclusive, monitoring wellbeing with counseling support for senior students. Efforts to improve attendance are having some impact from a low starting point.
Areas for Development
- •Develop consistently high-quality teaching and learning across all subject areas and phases and improve the attainment of all, but in particular of boys.
- •Use assessment data to plan and deliver challenging lessons, to ensure that all students reach their full potential.
- •Improve leadership skills to address the potential literacy and learning barriers associated with the school’s changing student population.
- •Ensure that all leaders use both internal and external data to conduct accurate self-evaluation and purposeful improvement planning with quantifiable targets.
- •Monitor and review the impact of the school’s literacy action plans to ensure improvements in literacy skills, particularly for boys.
- •Ensure that students are well prepared for benchmark testing.
- •Enhance curriculum initiatives to strengthen students’ wellbeing.
- •Improve students’ memorization of the Holy Qur’an and Hadith.
- •Raise teachers’ expectations so that all students are able to provide a better understanding of the impact of Islamic principles on their own lives.
- •Extend students’ speaking skills and their use of standard Arabic.
- •Make effective use of guidelines to evaluate writing compositions.
- •Ensure that students apply the newly introduced vocabulary into active situations through extended dialogues and writing.
- •Improve students’ speaking and writing skills.
- •Improve students' ability to adapt their language for different purposes and contexts, and their use of linguistic and literary terminology.
- •Improve students' writing skills at all levels, including their ability to write at length using accurate spelling, punctuation and grammar.
- •Improve students’ use of mental mathematical skills to make sense of word problems and to persevere in solving them independently.
- •Improve students’ reasoning skills and fluency to solve simple and complex problems using appropriate tools.
- •Ensure that levels of attainment are enhanced across all phases.
- •Ensure that most lesson planning provides opportunities for students to improve their practical investigation skills.
- •Ensure that all students are well motivated and take responsibility for their own learning, particularly in the boys’ section.
- •Improve students’ critical thinking and enquiry skills and their ability to work independently.
- •Ensure that repeat absentees improve their attendance and punctuality.
- •Raise students' wider world culture awareness and understanding.
- •Provide students with more opportunities for volunteering and community service.
- •Implement effective strategies to meet the needs of all groups of students and improve their critical thinking, problem-solving and independent learning skills.
- •Align internal assessments with external benchmark test results and use the information to identify and amend gaps in students’ learning.
- •Improve the quality of teachers’ written feedback to students.
- •Ensure that cross-curricular links are well planned to secure students' transfer of learning between different subjects.
- •Review, adapt and modify the curriculum to meet the needs of different ability groups.
- •Ensure that additional literacy lessons effectively support students' reading skills.
- •Consider the provision of alternative pathways to enable all groups of students to have a wider range of life skills and career options.
- •Ensure that the tracking of students’ progress is rigorous and secure, and fully informs individualized and personalized planning for all students of determination.