Misk Schools was one of the first schools to offer Cambridge Early Years following its global launch in 2023. As an established Cambridge school, the introduction of Cambridge Early Years was a natural fit. The programme also helps the school support Saudi Vision 2030’s educational goals, which include improving early years provision and raising the rate of kindergarten enrolment to 90% by 2030.
Victoria Ogilvie, Assistant Principal, Misk Schools Kindergarten and Alaa Showail, Assistant Principal, National Identity Subjects, Misk Junior Schools explain how they worked with Cambridge to implement and evolve Cambridge Early Years to fit their context.
‘Just about every good development in education is the result of a team effort. As we tell our students, collaboration is one of the top skills they need in response to the fluidity of modern life, along with the ability to think critically, creatively, and nimbly.
‘This philosophy applies just as much to curriculum development as it does to classroom learning. Since we adopted Cambridge Early Years, we have had the opportunity to work with the development team at Cambridge to explore how we can embrace the programme and contribute to its evolution.’
Flexible framework
‘We have been using Cambridge Early Years with KG2 children (aged four to five years) during this academic year 2023/24, and have found that it provides a developmentally appropriate and flexible framework that enables us to work within a local, national and global context.
‘For our school it is a natural precursor to the Cambridge Primary programme. We have found it to be well structured with a comprehensive set of learning statements and planning tools. In addition, it provides teachers with a range of resources: curriculum maps, home school communication tools, songs, stories and activity guidance etc.
‘There are exemplar materials to support planning processes and we can access resources using Cambridge Go, the Cambridge School Support Hub, and are now connecting with Cambridge to use their assessment tool – Check Together.’
Aligns well with other curricula
‘We are the first accredited High-Performance Learning (HPL) school in Saudi Arabia, which has allowed us to explore how best to align Cambridge Early Years and HPL in the Saudi context, making the most of the natural connections that arise as a result of both frameworks’ focus on active, student-led learning.
‘Our teachers have found Cambridge Early Years and HPL to be complementary. They are both research-based and pedagogy-led philosophies, and have encouraged teachers to create new ways of thinking about and delivering their teaching.
‘The other early success has been with our National Identity and English teachers using the same Cambridge Early Years framework for planning.
‘The Saudi Ministry of Education, National Identity Subjects of Arabic, Social Studies and National Studies are all taught in Arabic, whereas the rest of our curriculum is delivered in English. Our National Identity teachers have been able to interpret and translate versions of the Cambridge Early Years learning statements, resulting in teachers using the same curriculum for the first time.’
Support for teachers
‘Training and assistance from Cambridge through their online resources, online and face-to-face training and webinars has supported our use and development of the programme.
‘In addition, we were able to pilot the Cambridge Professional Development Qualification (PDQ) in Early Years Good Practice, a new certificate from Cambridge, which will be launched in 2025.’
Opportunities and next steps
‘One of the key areas we will continue to focus on next academic year is leveraging Cambridge Early Years and HPL resources for higher-level and critical thinking – a key development focus for us at Misk Schools. We will also be continuing to strengthen collaboration between our National Identity and English teams to enhance biliteracy, metacognition, and cross-curricular connections.
‘Alongside HPL, we believe Cambridge Early Years provides a very solid foundation for progression to the Primary Years, and we look forward to continuing to evolve and extend our use of it, using data to measure success from the next academic year onwards.’
You can read a longer version of this case study in Teach Middle East.