AL KHUBAIRAT COMMUNITY SCHOOL (THE BRITISH SCHOOL AL KHUBAIRAT)Principal & Leadership Team

Headmaster Mark Leppard MBE has led Al Khubairat Community School (The British School Al Khubairat) since 2014 — a tenure of over a decade that represents a significant marker of stability in a city where leadership turnover is a genuine risk factor for families. Before joining BSAK, Leppard served as Principal of Doha College for seven years, during which he was awarded the MBE and the school was shortlisted for Best International School at the UK Independent School Awards. That track record of sustained, high-performing leadership has carried directly into his tenure at BSAK.

The 2024–25 ADEK Irtiqa inspection rated leadership and management Outstanding across every indicator — including governance, self-evaluation and improvement planning, parent and community engagement, and management of staffing, facilities, and resources. Notably, self-evaluation and improvement planning improved from Very Good to Outstanding since the previous inspection in 2022–23, signalling that the leadership team is not resting on its rating but actively sharpening its own processes. Inspectors described leaders at all levels as maintaining a "consistent and relentless focus on improvement" with ambitious, aspirational goals grounded in a shared vision.

Governance is provided by a Board of Governors who, according to inspection findings, rigorously hold leaders accountable and ensure facilities and resources are of the highest quality. BSAK's not-for-profit status — unusual among private schools in Abu Dhabi — means all surplus is reinvested into the school rather than returned to shareholders, a structural feature that directly shapes the governance culture and resource allocation decisions parents experience.

On staffing, BSAK employs 156 teachers supported by 103 teaching assistants, serving 2,028 students. This produces a student-to-teacher ratio of 1:13, which sits marginally below the Abu Dhabi city average of 1:13.6 across all curriculum types — a competitive figure that reflects genuine investment in classroom capacity. The teaching workforce is predominantly drawn from the United Kingdom, Egypt, and Ireland. The inspection found teaching quality to be Outstanding across all four phases, with Phase 3 improving from Very Good to Outstanding since the last cycle — a meaningful uplift in the school's most academically demanding pre-sixth-form years. [MISSING: staff qualification percentage data, e.g. proportion holding Masters or above]

Parent engagement is rated Outstanding by inspectors, with the school described as highly successful in engaging parents as partners in learning. Practical mechanisms include online access to Accelerated Reading progress records, parent–child book clubs, book fairs, and structured guidance on reading strategies. The school's communication and detailed progress reporting were specifically commended. One area where leadership faces an ongoing challenge is in Arabic-medium departments: inspectors identified a need to strengthen middle leadership confidence in using the inspection framework and to improve the quality and consistency of leadership in Arabic-medium subject areas — a candid finding that the school has acknowledged in its own improvement planning.