In the debate that followed the late Queen Elizabeth II’s first State Opening of Parliament, Winston Churchill quipped that he was ‘always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught’. Perhaps drawing on the memory of his own schooldays at Harrow, Churchill offered the opposition benches a lesson that all teachers should bear in mind as we prepare for the start of a new academic year. Children are naturally eager to learn, to be challenged, and to think for themselves. The difficult part is helping pupils to make sense of the information they encounter without stifling their curiosity.
In Dubai, that natural eagerness is perhaps a little stronger this year as pupils are not only going back to school but also returning to the ordinary rhythm of lessons, friendships and classroom life. Over the spring, conflict in the region prompted schools to switch to remote learning for several weeks and replace end-of-year exams. As British families found out during the pandemic, despite the universe of information that children have access to via the internet and artificial intelligence, there is no real substitute for learning in the classroom.
Amid the uncertainty and doom-mongering headlines earlier this year, Dubai’s education sector has proved incredibly robust. At Harrow International School Dubai, we are opening our doors for the very first time at the end of the month. Rather than withdrawing their children, families have shown renewed confidence and our overseas applications have doubled. In Dubai, Britain’s great schools have found a thriving new frontier, with Harrow just the latest arrival.
Related
What draws many internationally mobile families to Dubai is precisely what they admire about the British independent school model: opportunity, resilience, ambition without arrogance, and an outlook that is international without ever losing its roots. Just as parents don’t choose a school based on one year’s exam results, expat families are looking beyond the headlines to Dubai’s fundamentals. Factors like connectivity, quality of life and an unshakeable sense of forward motion do not change after a single difficult spring.
The reception area of the new Harrow Dubai school, which opens on 31 August. // Image: Harrow Dubai
I’ve seen that confidence first-hand. Our founding pupils already come from some 50 nationalities, and more than half of them are British. While roughly four in five families are already settled in the UAE, it is the one in five families arriving from overseas, many from the UK, who are, in effect, voting with their feet. Since the situation has stabilised over the summer, the few families who had deferred their places have been quietly asking to take them up after all. We will open on 31 August with around 410 children, comfortably above the 375 we initially planned.
Harrow Dubai: British education with a global outlook
For parents who may have lived in London, Singapore, Riyadh or Mumbai, the British curriculum offers continuity and confidence. Dubai adds something distinct: a sense that education is part of a wider national project to attract talent, raise ambition, and prepare young people for a genuinely global future.
But a name and a waiting list are not an education. What makes schools like Harrow, Brighton College, and Repton succeed in Dubai is the offer of a full British public school experience that will feel familiar to those of us who benefited from such a fortunate upbringing in the UK.
Content from our partners
Although Harrow Dubai is not a boarding school, we are instilling that same ethos of intellectual independence and the importance of community into our pupils’ daily lives. Children will dine together at shared tables rather than on their own hunched over a lunchbox. Older pupils will complete their prep independently before they go home. Meanwhile, sport, music, and drama are all treated as essential parts of the curriculum, not after-school add-ons.
Harrow’s values, rooted in the classic British virtues of courage, honour, humility, and fellowship, resonate strongly with the families I speak with in Dubai. Ours will be a phone-free school where pupils still write in exercise books and learn proper handwriting. Here, technology is a tool to be mastered, not a master to be served. I want to send out young people who are genuine critical thinkers, who know how to use artificial intelligence and, just as importantly, when not to use it.
These are the qualities that make Britain’s independent schools the envy of the world. Together, they provide a Churchillian model of resilience, courage, strength of character, and a love of learning that is being successfully replicated around the globe.
[See also: The Spear’s Schools Index 2026]
That matters for Britain. At a time when influence is increasingly measured not only in trade figures or diplomatic communiqués but in trust, familiarity, and shared standards, education remains one of the UK’s most powerful global exports. A child educated in a British school overseas does not simply learn a syllabus. They absorb habits of debate, service, and public duty that can last a lifetime.
As an example of soft power, the UK could hardly ask for a more effective ambassador than a community of bright and enterprising young people who share in our country’s values and sense of fair play. Despite the recent uncertainty, Dubai has proved itself to be a resilient hub for talent, entrepreneurship, capital and ideas; a city that will matter more, not less, in the decades ahead. Britain’s independent schools have a chance to shape what this city looks like for the next generation.
