International School of Choueifat (Doha)

the_hippo....... i read that post and all your posts about the school and sabis system.... but as i said, so far my kids are enjoying and as long as i am satifisfied of their progress...tha will be fine...

the_hippo....... i read that post and all your posts about the school and sabis system.... but as i said, so far my kids are enjoying and as long as i am satifisfied of their progress...tha will be fine...

Also, the schools do not necessarily employ qualified teachers. They can treat staff badly. Not my cup of tea at all. I don't believe in being taught by the book. All they are doing is yes sir, no sir. No free thinking. No creative thinking. Just a money making scheme. No care for the students.

Unfortunately there still seem to be some parents who misguidedly think that the Choueifat institutions are proper schools. Here is a review of a typical Choueifat "school" from The International Schools' Review.

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The 25 or so Choueifat schools around the world follow a curriculum called the SABIS system, and it is appalling. Students are forced to rote memorize reams of information in all subjects, information that will be slightly adjusted and increased from year to year, so that effectively they are relearning the same material in the same way again and again and again from year to year. No matter what grade they are in, students are never held accountable for having actually learned anything before, so they are constantly reinventing their boring wheel. The curriculum materials are so cheaply and badly produced, it is almost unbelievable. In English, for example, the main textbooks are SABIS written and produced military histories from grade four through grade twelve. No real literature is used because literature is, by its very nature, subversive and therefore threatening to the fundamentalist Islamic values that the SABIS system caters to. The math program is better, because the SABIS system of testing and retesting the same concepts over and over again lends itself more effectively to a largely linear area of study. Science education is also limited, churning out technicians rather than thinkers.

Thinking is discouraged generally, with all students and teachers across the system forced to follow exactly the same lifeless lesson plans from day to day, without regard to teacher or student interests or abilities. SABIS students will never, for example, create their own original videos as part of a graded class project. When some better informed parents complain about this kind of monotony and insensitivity to different learning styles, the SABIS system responds with an extracurricular program they call Student Life. All of the fun and creative work is supposed to happen in there, outside of the graded class work and along with sports. But in fact most kids end up spending most of student life playing soccer, which they would have done anyway. It is not a venue to stretch and grow, because it is not graded, and grades are all that students take seriously here.

I also question the academic integrity of the school, even judging it within the parameters the SABIS system sets for itself. Students take tests constantly, mostly multiple choice tests, and if they fail they are supposed to be retaught the missed material and then they are retested. They post improvement charts saying, "Look how much the students improved after retesting!" But in fact many times the students were allowed to retest three or even five times between the first score and the last, and it is a rare person who wouldn't pick up a few more points after taking essentially the same test five times running. British teachers seem to find the SABIS system less offensive than American teachers do.

Although Robert Kleynhans is the acting director, he is just a sweet-natured, displaced South African yes man. He is big on contact sports for boys (Quote: "Girls should not play soccer. They should cheer the boys on."); and soft on discipline for spoiled rich Egyptian kids. The real big cheese is Saleh Ayche, who also runs the other Chouiefat school in Cairo. Ayche is comfortable with luring teachers in on false pretenses and reneging on whatever parts of the contract he chooses. He is a business man, not an educator.

Non-Arab kids don't last here. The Arab kids bully them, and the rigid, slow-paced, illogical curriculum baffles them. Sometimes they stumble into the school by mistake, possibly sucked in by the well-funded marketing campaign, and then their parents pull them out as soon as they can.

So far, my kids are enjoying their new school and as a parent, i am quite satisfied of their progress. They are following a different system called SABIS. Try to check the net to know how the system works. Basically they have weekly ( called AMS -academic monitoring system )and monthly CAT ( continuous assessment test ) exams and the final exams. Fees for my grade 4 is approx 22t QR per year

Could u tell about the school and the fees pls

M