Dubai English Speaking Schools

Our Journey
DESS Primary Oud Metha celebrated its 60th birthday in 2023 and is the oldest British school in Dubai. DESS College opened in 2005 and provides Secondary and Sixth Form education from ages 11-18.

When it opens in September 2025, the new-build DESS Primary Academic City will sit alongside our existing DESS Primary Oud Metha and DESS College.

All our schools provide opportunities for s

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Our Journey
DESS Primary Oud Metha celebrated its 60th birthday in 2023 and is the oldest British school in Dubai. DESS College opened in 2005 and provides Secondary and Sixth Form education from ages 11-18.

When it opens in September 2025, the new-build DESS Primary Academic City will sit alongside our existing DESS Primary Oud Metha and DESS College.

All our schools provide opportunities for students to flourish in a DESS environment built on kindness, gratitude and humanity, that ensures they are not only aspirational but also nurtured in their creative, social and emotional capacities.

Together, DESS Primary Oud Metha and DESS College educate 2,800 students according to the English National Curriculum, and we are proud and delighted that they are consistently rated as Outstanding by the Dubai schools’ regulator, the Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA) and the British Schools Overseas (BSO) inspectorate.

Having not-for-profit status means that DESS Primary Oud Metha and DESS College are not required to deliver profits to owners, shareholders or investors. Like other not-for-profit entities, once our running costs have been met, every surplus dirham can be invested directly into our schools.

And this isn’t new. In fact, it’s been the case ever since DESS’s first 10 students arrived at a small block of flats in 1963 to be taught by a British airman on loan from Sharjah RAF base.

Those humble beginnings quickly paved the way for the appointment of our first Headteacher, Harry Atkinson, the following year, the move to our cherished Oud Metha site in 1967 and the formation of our Board of Trustees in 1969.

Countless other defining moments of growth and achievement followed as we marched through the decades to 2003 and our bold decision to build DESS College so that our Year 6 children had a guaranteed secondary school destination at a time when there were so few options.

Then came the addition of our Sixth Form campus in 2017, along with the acquisition of the grounds and facilities that went with it.

And here we are again. On the brink of another new adventure with our new primary school in Academic City opening in September 2025. Relevant, radiant and raring to make more important decisions to make sure we protect and preserve our School and College for the next 60 years.

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