Welcome to all members of our DAS family – Students, parents, faculty and staff,

I would like to extend a warm welcome to all of you.  For our new members, you will be happy to know that what you see is the result of more than four decades of collaboration among members of our highly dedicated community. Ever since the School was founded as a not-for-profit organization in 1977, DAS faculty and staff, parents and students have been committed to continuous learning and development. We aim to serve our students today and prepare them to sustain the effort tomorrow to make a positive difference, locally and globally.

Our vision and mission statements were created very deliberately by representatives from all our stakeholder groups. As we collaborate to fulfill them, we see ourselves as a family, a community, a laboratory and an incubator for innovations that support our aims. We hold firm to the basic principles of service, respect, and responsibility while remaining nimble and adapting continuously in order to stay ahead of the rapidly changing developments in our world. With our partners, the parents, we aim to give our students the knowledge and skills to learn and collaborate, social and emotional stability, as well as the passion and determination that they will need to help lead our beloved country and region into the future that they will help create.

Committed to the aims and processes of the International Baccalaureate, we provide our students with a balance between confidence in their own identity on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the open- mindedness, skills, and understandings needed to be part of the greater world. For this, they must have the language abilities to be able to communicate both in their own setting and with the rest of the world. We aim to teach them to inquire, to think effectively, to be ready to take intelligent risks, and to be responsible for their own learning and for their positive impact on others. We also aim to ensure a balance for the development of their minds and their bodies by providing a full program of sports and various activities.

Because our commitment to the whole child has become well known, the number of students applying to join our student body has risen – in 2019, we were only able to take 12% of those who applied, meaning that those accepted are usually ready and able to make use of the opportunities the school offers. Similarly, we seek to recruit faculty members who are ready and able to collaborate, benefit from international educational research, and learn continuously to ensure the progress of our students and the school as a whole. We also provide a technology-rich environment, using current devices and programs to support best practice for teaching, learning and co-curricular activities.  We participate locally and internationally in robotics and science fairs, Makers’ Fairs, Model United Nations (MUN) in English and Model Arab League in Arabic, and many other fields.

We welcome all the members of our DAS family to participate fully in our learning community and to share in preparing our students to continue in the great work of contributing to development of Saudi Arabia and the Arab world. I extend heartfelt thanks and appreciation to DAS faculty and staff, students and parents, graduates and members of our greater community for their participation and contributions to this important mission.

Sincerely,

Khalid Alturki,

President