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Excellence in Schools
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t Citizens School, they believe that it’s important to reset education and learning to meet 21st-century needs, preparing students for jobs that haven’t yet been created and teaching them to become entrepreneurs. As Sir Ken Robinson said, “The educational system today is archaic, it is cohort based and emerged in the time of the Victorian Industrial Revolution and was designed to cater for that time in history not today’s social reality.” That is why Citizens School has been designed with a fresh and unique perspective; one that is suited to the individual needs of each child, giving them the freedom to
explore themes, widen their interests, and choose the paths that will allow them to attain their full potential. A visionary school at the heart of a new education hub that encompasses a teacher training foundation, wellbeing centre and a EYFS to Key Stage 5 school, all conceived, designed and developed in the UAE by Al Zarooni Emirates Investments, Citizens School is set to do things a little differently. This means getting away from ‘an educational system built on the idea that everybody’s mind works in a similar way and the objective is to retain information and use it. There are, for instance, no ‘teachers,’ only ‘mentors.’ The reasoning is straightforward: a teacher’s job,
traditionally, is to impart knowledge through teaching and explanation in formal subject classes. However, at Citizens, they realise that the days of learning from a single source are long gone. Nowadays, children have instant access to knowledge. Therefore, Citizens School teachers will be fittingly referred to as ‘mentors,’ because, in addition to providing instruction and sharing knowledge, they focus on putting that knowledge into practice, nurturing creativity, and fostering personal development to motivate students to improve their abilities. In the same way, students are to be referred to as ‘learners’. This approach gives learners significantly more options in the classroom, affording