Unlocking the Hidden Curriculum

Dubai, UAE
November 23-24, 2024

The World Schools Summit brings together leaders and decision-makers from schools, academia, NGOs, and the public and private sectors including tech companies, to transform teaching and learning by harnessing the Hidden Curriculum.

Participation in the World Schools Summit is free to attend and by invitation or application only.

A truly global conference
bringing together
the brightest stars in education

600 school leaders from around the world

Leading figures in global education

Addressing the sector’s most vital issues

Empowering schools with the hidden curriculum

Programme

The principals of schools that have triumphed in the World’s Best School Prizes and achieved certification in the Best School to Work programme will share their best practices and innovative solutions alongside leading figures in global education.

Innovation & Technology

Leadership & Development

Whole Child Approaches

Professional Wellbeing

Global Collaboration

Leadership Council

Our expert Leadership Council guide will guide the programme of the World Schools Summit, drawing on their decades of knowledge and experience in education and in leading schools.

Alex Crossman

Headmaster of London Academy of Excellence, London, UK

Asha Alexander

Principal of GEMS Legacy School, Dubai

Fiona Cottam

Principal of Hartland International School, Dubai

Kiran Bir Sethi

Founder of Riverside School, India

Mark Leppard MBE

Principal, The British School Al Khubairat, UAE

Sandra Ospina

Head of Learning & Innovation, SEK International School, Saudi Arabia

Simon O’Connor

Director of Deira International School, Dubai

Vijita Patel

Principal of Swiss Cottage School, London, UK

William Campbell

Founding Head of School, Franklin School, USA

Venue & Hotels

The World Schools Summit will be held at Deira International School, Dubai, UAE on November 23-24, 2024.

Kiran Bir Sethi

Founder of Riverside School, India

Kiran Bir Sethi is an Indian designer, educationist, education reformer, and social entrepreneur. With a degree in visual communication from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, she ran a flourishing design practice, but it was when her children started going to school that Sethi recognised her true calling -putting design thinking into education.

She founded the award winning Riverside School in Ahmedabad that focuses on empowering children with the I CAN MINDSET. She then founded aProCh ( an initiative to make cities more child friendly ) and Design for Change, which is today the largest movement of change for and by the children where children use the simple framework of Feel/ Imagine /Do/Share to design solutions for some of their greatest challenges.

Her most recent venture is the Riverside Learning Center which offers training programmes to empower schools across the world to become ‘I CAN SCHOOLS’ by using the codified processes from Riverside.

Over the years, Kiran, Riverside and Design for Change have won several accolades and Awards, and some of the most recent ones are : Riverside wins the World’s Best School Prize for Innovation, HundrEd.org selects Design for Change into the Hall of Fame, The Earth Prize, the Rockefeller Innovation Award, The Lego Remagine Award, The Lexus prize, was The Top 10 Global Teacher nominee and the Light of Freedom Award. She is an Ashoka and Yidan Fellow.

Sethi is a published author, having written a book, ‘Every Child CAN’ for HarperCollins, which chronicles the journey and offers readers a glimpse into Riverside’s unique design-led approach to empowering children.
Born in Bangalore, India, Sethi comes from a family of designers. She lives in Ahmedabad with her 2 children, Raag and Jazz and her husband, Geet. She loves life, dark chocolate and Govinda movies!

Asha Alexander

Principal of GEMS Legacy School, Dubai

Asha Alexander is Principal at GEMS Legacy School, Dubai and Executive Leader of Climate Change at GEMS Education. With 35 years of experience in the provision of education to K-12 students, she has overseen the school’s transition to an exclusively digital curriculum.

Passionate, driven to achieve aspirational goals and ready to take on any challenge, she believes in nurturing students’ hearts and minds and is particular about a value-based education. She is excited by the prospect of watching every child achieve his or her potential. Asha is a UN certified Climate Change Leader and has made presentations at several Conference of Parties (COP) and other international conferences and has conducted workshops on leadership, and change management for schools in India and UAE. She has led the school’s Twinning Program with 87 schools enabling schools to develop partnerships around the world to embed the SDGs. Currently she has established GEMS Hub Schools for Sustainability in Italy, Indonesia, Malawi and India and is working with the Ministry of Education in UAE to bring Climate Literacy to schools in the UAE. She has been recognized as a UNCC Champion at the 60th anniversary of UNITAR this year at Geneva.

Sandra Ospina

Head of Learning & Innovation, SEK International School, Saudi Arabia

Sandra has more than a decade of experience in education. She has taught from nursery to university level, has developed science curricula, and has held leadership roles in the past few years. Sandra's educational philosophy centers on nurturing the whole child, which in short means attending to a child's cognitive, social-emotional, physical, and ethical development while inspiring their curiosity, and creativity.

In her current role as Head of Learning and Innovation at SEK Riyadh international school, she is working closely with allthe faculty to ensure that the curriculum, teaching methodologies, and resources align with the IB philosophy to provide the children at the school with an exceptional educational experience.

Sandra has a BA in Chemistry, BS in Biology, MA in Biology education from Brooklyn College(New York), an M.ed in International Educational Policy from Harvard Graduate School of Education, and is currently working on her Executive Master in Business Administration.

Vijita Patel

Principal of Swiss Cottage School, London, UK

Asha Alexander is Principal at GEMS Legacy School, Dubai and Executive Leader of Climate Change at GEMS Education. With 35 years of experience in the provision of education to K-12 students, she has overseen the school’s transition to an exclusively digital curriculum.

Passionate, driven to achieve aspirational goals and ready to take on any challenge, she believes in nurturing students’ hearts and minds and is particular about a value-based education. She is excited by the prospect of watching every child achieve his or her potential. Asha is a UN certified Climate Change Leader and has made presentations at several Conference of Parties (COP) and other international conferences and has conducted workshops on leadership, and change management for schools in India and UAE. She has led the school’s Twinning Program with 87 schools enabling schools to develop partnerships around the world to embed the SDGs. Currently she has established GEMS Hub Schools for Sustainability in Italy, Indonesia, Malawi and India and is working with the Ministry of Education in UAE to bring Climate Literacy to schools in the UAE. She has been recognized as a UNCC Champion at the 60th anniversary of UNITAR this year at Geneva.

Alex Crossman

Headmaster of London Academy of Excellence, London, UK

Asha Alexander is Principal at GEMS Legacy School, Dubai and Executive Leader of Climate Change at GEMS Education. With 35 years of experience in the provision of education to K-12 students, she has overseen the school’s transition to an exclusively digital curriculum.

Passionate, driven to achieve aspirational goals and ready to take on any challenge, she believes in nurturing students’ hearts and minds and is particular about a value-based education. She is excited by the prospect of watching every child achieve his or her potential. Asha is a UN certified Climate Change Leader and has made presentations at several Conference of Parties (COP) and other international conferences and has conducted workshops on leadership, and change management for schools in India and UAE. She has led the school’s Twinning Program with 87 schools enabling schools to develop partnerships around the world to embed the SDGs. Currently she has established GEMS Hub Schools for Sustainability in Italy, Indonesia, Malawi and India and is working with the Ministry of Education in UAE to bring Climate Literacy to schools in the UAE. She has been recognized as a UNCC Champion at the 60th anniversary of UNITAR this year at Geneva.

Simon O’Connor

Director of Deira International School, Dubai

Simon O’Connor is the Director of Deira International School – an outstanding rated all through UK/IB curriculum school based in Festival City, Dubai. Simon is also Chief of Education for the Al Futtaim Education Foundation, working across their portfolio of schools. Simon has over 25 years of experience in education and joined DIS in August of 2020. Prior to this he was Principal of Jumeirah College, an outstanding school in Dubai, since 2013.

Simon is passionate about learning and ensuring all students are challenged in lessons for them to achieve their full potential. He is also very interested in school leadership and is currently studying for Doctorate with the University of Buckingham, researching the impact of a focus on organisational culture in international schools.

Before moving to the UAE, Simon taught History and Politics for over 20 years in a variety of different school contexts. In his last role in the UK, Simon worked as a school leader in a very successful grammar school in Kent. His role there was curriculum lead and was also responsible for the management of a teaching school and working across an academy chain of schools which he helped to found.

As a student Simon studied for a BA in History and Philosophy at the University of Wales, College of Cardiff where he was a choral scholar at Llandaff Cathedral. He then studied for a PGCE at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was also a choral scholar. Simon also holds a Master’s Degree in Education Leadership, and a National Professional Qualification for Headship.

Fiona Cottam

Principal of Hartland International School, Dubai

Asha Alexander is Principal at GEMS Legacy School, Dubai and Executive Leader of Climate Change at GEMS Education. With 35 years of experience in the provision of education to K-12 students, she has overseen the school’s transition to an exclusively digital curriculum.

Passionate, driven to achieve aspirational goals and ready to take on any challenge, she believes in nurturing students’ hearts and minds and is particular about a value-based education. She is excited by the prospect of watching every child achieve his or her potential. Asha is a UN certified Climate Change Leader and has made presentations at several Conference of Parties (COP) and other international conferences and has conducted workshops on leadership, and change management for schools in India and UAE. She has led the school’s Twinning Program with 87 schools enabling schools to develop partnerships around the world to embed the SDGs. Currently she has established GEMS Hub Schools for Sustainability in Italy, Indonesia, Malawi and India and is working with the Ministry of Education in UAE to bring Climate Literacy to schools in the UAE. She has been recognized as a UNCC Champion at the 60th anniversary of UNITAR this year at Geneva.

William Campbell

Founding Head of School, Franklin School, USA

Asha Alexander is Principal at GEMS Legacy School, Dubai and Executive Leader of Climate Change at GEMS Education. With 35 years of experience in the provision of education to K-12 students, she has overseen the school’s transition to an exclusively digital curriculum.

Passionate, driven to achieve aspirational goals and ready to take on any challenge, she believes in nurturing students’ hearts and minds and is particular about a value-based education. She is excited by the prospect of watching every child achieve his or her potential. Asha is a UN certified Climate Change Leader and has made presentations at several Conference of Parties (COP) and other international conferences and has conducted workshops on leadership, and change management for schools in India and UAE. She has led the school’s Twinning Program with 87 schools enabling schools to develop partnerships around the world to embed the SDGs. Currently she has established GEMS Hub Schools for Sustainability in Italy, Indonesia, Malawi and India and is working with the Ministry of Education in UAE to bring Climate Literacy to schools in the UAE. She has been recognized as a UNCC Champion at the 60th anniversary of UNITAR this year at Geneva.

Mark Leppard MBE

Principal, The British School Al Khubairat, UAE

Mark is a successful and ambitious school leader of an outstanding British international school. In 2015 Mark was awarded an MBE for his services to education and has an M.Ed in Educational Leadership. In 2023 Mark won the SchoolsCompare.com Best Principal in the UAE Award. His focus is on team building, in terms of motivation, personnel and structure, ensuring that the students benefit from these developments. He has a lifelong passion for learning and ensures that the student is at the heart of all decisions that are made. Holistic education is fundamental to Mark's philosophy and he believes that learning should not be restricted just to the formal classroom. Mark has a track record of success, having led schools through 7 'Outstanding' school inspections and accreditations. He is a lead school inspector and has inspected a variety of schools around the globe.

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