Weekly Bulletins 2025/26

The School Development Plan (SDP)

The School Development Plan (SDP) enables the whole school community to understand how the school is delivering its Vision and Mission. The SDP is designed to give a sharp, clear focus to those aspects of our work which we believe are most in need of improvement, or will support us to deliver our five-star vision. We set priorities and goals for the year, actions to achieve these priorities, and timescales for their implementation.

At the end of each academic year in June, all departments in school review their area, noting strengths to be celebrated and the areas which need to be improved. The Senior Leadership Team then collates all the evaluations and creates the whole school development plan -our SDP-for the forthcoming year. These department reviews also help us plan and prioritise our budget and guide us to organise staff training. The draft SDP is then shared with Orbital for their comments and agreement. The SDP is monitored monthly by senior leaders and by Orbital to ensure we are on track to deliver the planned outcomes.

This year, we are focusing on two new accreditations, an Online Safety Award and a Parent Partnership Award. Additionally, we are undertaking re-accreditation by the internationally recognised body, CIS (Council of International Schools), and re-accreditation of our Wellbeing Award. We will also start preparations for a BSO (British Schools Overseas) accreditation in 2026–27.

In Primary, the main focus this year is to enhance our Science provision by ensuring all our students have more opportunities for scientific enquiry. We are also launching Enterprise projects for students in Year 3 and Year 5.

We will continue to prioritise Reading, Writing, and Maths to ensure solid foundations so that our students are able to thrive in Secondary school.

In Secondary, developing our Sixth Form provision with regard to subjects on offer, is a key priority. Additionally, we will be enhancing opportunities for our students by developing our work experience programme, having a KS3 musical, growing the Duke of Edinburgh (DofE) programme, and embedding our trips and residentials offer. I am delighted to share that twelve of our students will be attending the Model United Nations (MUN) Orbital Conference in Budapest this year. This trip is sponsored by Qatar Airways. We are currently planning a number of different residential trips which will be offered to all students from Y5–Y13.

As a school, we are focused on improving our communication with stakeholders and using their feedback to drive our school forward. We are also committed to developing our student leadership body to ensure their impact is clearly visible across the school. In addition to our existing leadership roles, this year we have new roles such as Curriculum Champions and Qatar Ambassadors. Parents will have noted from our calendar that we have a number of new events taking place and that we have increased the number of opportunities for parental involvement.

As it is a fairly lengthy document, the SDP has been summarised below to give our community an overview of our goals for 2025–2026.

Academic Results - Promoting our value of Excellence

As parents will be aware, excellence is one of our five school values. One of the ways our students demonstrate excellence is through their academic results. I am proud to be able to share with you the Academic results from 2024-25. As a British Curriculum School, we benchmark our results on UK National averages. Below you can see a comparison of our results compared to UK National averages for 2025.

At the end of EYFS, we assess our FS2 children to see if they have achieved a "Good Level of Development" (GLD). At Oryx International 87% achieved a GLD. ( UK 67%)

At the end of Year 1 students take the Phonics Test . At Oryx International 96% passed. (UK 81%)

At the end of Year 6, when Pupils leave Primary, they are working in line with or above UK Age Related Expectations (ARE) . In 2025, our students achieved:- Reading 92 % (UK 75%) Writing 73% ( UK 72%) Maths 85 % (UK 74%) This Y6 information is used to support the target setting process for our students when they move into Year 7.

All Y10 students, that took I/GCSE fast track Mathematics, achieved a grade 9 (A*). Over the last three years all students have achieved grades 9-7(A*-A) which is an excellent achievement.

Excellence isn't just about attainment and grades it's also about the progress that individual students make because of their learning behaviours of perseverance, resilience and growth mindset. Excellent attainment and progress is publicly celebrated in assemblies, and through our formal Prize Giving events during the year. Our teachers' commitment to the value of excellence is not only through their teaching but also the time and effort they dedicate to our students to ensure their wellbeing. This academic year, this has been reflected in the additional courses that are on offer to our Sixth Form students and the modular courses now available to iGCSE students.