With September 2026 quickly approaching and construction activity continuing around the clock, Education UAE’s second visit to Ash Mount School in Mudon finds a campus that has been thought through with remarkable care, where the child has come first in every decision, and where the thinking behind every space, every material and every detail reveals a school that has known exactly what it wanted to be from the very beginning.
Step inside Ash Mount School on a warm May morning in Dubai and the first thing that reaches you is not something you see. It is something you feel. The air is cooler. Not the sharp chill of an air-conditioned lobby, but something quieter and more considered, a gentleness that settles over you as the heat of outside gives way to shade and stillness. The building itself is doing this. Designed to generate its own shade across the course of the day and draw airflow through its spaces, the campus sits roughly five degrees cooler than the world beyond its walls. In a city where the months ahead will be relentless, that is not a small thing. It is a signal, and it sets the tone for everything else you are about to discover.
Education UAE’s second visit to the Ash Mount site in Mudon, in conversation with Mr Amit Kothari, Director of Interstar Advisory Services, Ms. Abigail Fishbourne, Principal, Ms. Aamna Thomas, Head of Primary and Ms. Mahbouba Mohamed, Head of MOE Subjects confirmed what the first visit had told us, that the school taking shape here has been designed from the inside out.
Low-Rise by Design, Not by Compromise
One of the most immediate things that strikes you about the Ash Mount site is how it sits in the landscape. Low-rise, human-scaled, unhurried. In a city that tends to measure ambition in floors, it is a deliberate counter-statement.
Amit was unequivocal about it, “People look at us and don’t realise small children need to be in a low-rise school.”
This is not a compromise. It is a conviction. The Pre-KG corridors are scaled to young bodies. The early years classrooms are sized for movement, for circle time, for the kind of unhurried learning that does not ask a four-year-old to navigate a building designed around adult proportions. Everything fits the children because it was designed to fit the children, and that distinction matters more than it might initially sound.
The decision to stay low-rise is also permanent. No floors will be added. The build-up area has been allocated in full to the children who will learn here, and the leadership team is unequivocal that this will not change as the school grows year on year.
Amit said, “We are allocating almost all of our build-up area for the children.”
That phrase, simple as it sounds, carries the entire design philosophy of the school.
A Building That Teaches
Ash Mount is delivering an IB curriculum through a Reggio Emilia-influenced approach to the physical environment. The principle is that students learn from the environment around them, that the building itself is a teacher, and that nothing in the design should be neutral or incidental.
Walk through the early years spaces and this is visible in every corner. The carpet is built into the floor rather than laid over it. All the furniture is wood. The lighting is soft, not institutional. The classroom boards carry no backing paper, and all work displayed will be hung at the eye level of the children themselves, not the adults.
“Children should see themselves on all the walls,” Abigail explained.
Even the taps are different. Smaller, shaped to invite curiosity in small hands. A tap is not just a tap here. It is a starting point. Your hand is small. The water does this. That is an inquiry.
In the primary specialist areas, four art rooms and one science lab and science rooms serve primary-aged children in a unit with a central play area and, critically, a wet play area. Students can create channels, build dams, change the flow of water, and watch what happens. Cause and effect. Thinking through making. Nothing predetermined, everything open.
“How can we make sure it is open-ended learning?” Abigail put the question plainly. The answer is in the design.
It is important to state what this approach explicitly rejects. These specialist spaces, for art, science, sports, and music, will not be converted into classrooms in the future. The intention is to stay compact and to remain deliberate. The school was not designed to expand upwards, and it was not designed to cannibalise its own specialist spaces in the name of enrolment.
Sustainability as Infrastructure
Ash Mount is also on track to obtain their LEED Platinum certification. Everything used in the build has been made in the UAE. Solar panels on the roof supply the parking canopy for staff. Air conditioning can operate in ambient mode. The tiles, the paint, the materials across the building have been chosen to work together rather than simply coexist.
“There is no randomness in the design,” Amit observed. “After six or seven schools, we are getting better at this.”
Sustainability here is not a brochure claim. It is integrated into the infrastructure itself, from the building’s passive cooling to the materials on the classroom walls. The school teaching sustainability and the school being built sustainably are, by design, the same thing.
The International Baccalaureate Makes It Official
In news that has been warmly received across the school community, Ash Mount has received official notification from the International Baccalaureate confirming its approval as a candidate school for both the Primary Years Programme (PYP) and the Middle Years Programme (MYP).
Candidate status is a formal milestone on the path to full IB World School authorisation, and it carries genuine weight. It reflects the alignment between what Ash Mount is building, educationally and physically, and the standards the IB requires of its schools. The school’s ambition is to deliver the full IB continuum from Kindergarten to Grade 12, covering PYP, MYP, the IB Diploma Programme and the IB Career-related Programme, placing it among a small number of full continuum IB schools in Dubai.
Read More: Ash Mount School Approved as IB Candidate School in Dubai
Classrooms That Open Outward
All the KG classrooms at Ash Mount offer a pool view on one side and a garden view on the other. This is not a luxury touch. It is a considered part of the learning environment, bringing the outside in and reminding students that the world extends beyond the wall they are facing.
The classrooms are also designed to encourage collaboration between spaces. Teachers were involved in the design process, and the collaboration between classrooms and colleagues is already underway in the months before the school opens. Shared best practice is a defining principle of the IB approach, and at Ash Mount it has already begun to shape the physical environment rather than simply inform what happens inside it.
The staffroom, the flow between shared areas, the layout of teaching hubs and learning hubs, all of it reflects conversations that have already taken place between the people who will deliver the programme.
Mudon: A Community Built for This School, and a School Built for This Community
Ash Mount is not simply located in Mudon. It is, in the most meaningful sense, of Mudon.
The wider community is set up with a disproportionately high ratio of green space to built environment. A park is being developed adjacent to the school site. Everything families need is concentrated within the neighbourhood. The founding vision of Mudon was a self-contained community, and Ash Mount reflects that same thinking. The school belongs to the people who live here, not to a wider catchment map.
“It is very important for us to be part of Mudon,” Amit said.
Abigail described how the design language reaches further than the school’s own perimeter.
“They are actually in a school that is built for them, designed for them, creating spaces for them.”
That extends to the way the school reads visually within its setting. Rather than a steel-and-glass structure that announces its own presence, the campus aims to feel aligned with the heritage and character of its surroundings.
“We are not building a corporate structure,” Amit said. “This is not being designed to impress parents.”
A Community That Already Exists
By the time of this visit, hundreds of families have already registered their interest in Ash Mount. The number matters less than what those families have already begun to do.
They are attending events. They are contributing ideas. They are taking part in team-building activities. Some are already planting seeds that will, in time, become the trees of the school’s Forest School. The school community has begun to form in the months before any child has walked into a classroom.
“Families already feel part of the school,” Abigail said.
The Arabic integration at Ash Mount is woven through the design and the curriculum at every stage, not added as an afterthought but considered and embedded from the foundation up. With 52 nationalities already represented in the enrolled community, the school’s character is genuinely international, and the care taken to reflect Emirati heritage and context within that speaks to a school that understands where it is and why that matters.
On Track, With Purpose
On site today, between 460 and 550 workers are operating across three shifts, 24 hours a day. Staff are beginning to move into the building as the days grow warmer. The campus is taking its final shape, and everything is moving with the kind of quiet confidence that comes from doing this before and knowing the difference between a building that looks finished and a school that is genuinely ready.
Ash Mount will open in September 2026 as a complete school from day one. The pool, the specialist areas, the early years spaces, the outdoor zones: all of it will be operational before the first bell rings. This is an Interstar principle that the team has held across every school they have built.
“So parents that join on day one will get a full school,” Amit said simply.
What is taking shape in Mudon is not a provisional opening or a staged arrival. It is a school that is being built, in every sense of the word, to be ready. And when Ash Mount opens, it will not feel new. It will feel, as it is clearly intended to feel, like it was always going to be here.
The Ash Mount community is already active well ahead of September, with a programme of events running throughout May that reflects the school’s commitment to building real connections before the doors open.
Take a look around Ash Mount school:
The Education UAE team gets an up-close look at the Ashmount School site in Mudon, where construction is well underway ahead of the September 2026 opening. 
Principal Abigail Fishbourne leads the group around the pool terrace, one of several completed facilities that will be ready and in use from the first day of term 
One of the school’s nearly-finished classrooms, where warm tones, built-in wooden storage and carpet integrated into the floor already feel considered and calm. 
One of the school’s nearly-finished classrooms, where warm tones, built-in wooden storage and carpet integrated into the floor already feel considered and calm. 
The Education UAE team gets an up-close look at the Ashmount School site in Mudon, where construction is well underway ahead of the September 2026 opening. 
Floor-to-ceiling glazing connects the interior learning spaces to the campus beyond, a design choice that keeps children oriented to the wider world around them. 
The Quantum Media team documenting the visit as Mr Kothari addresses the group on site, with the wider Mudon community visible in the background.
Upcoming Events at Ash Mount School
Coffee & Connect Term 3: Wednesday 13 May, 3:00pm to 4:00pm Live online session
The latest in Ash Mount’s ongoing Coffee & Connect series, designed in partnership with the community. An opportunity for families to meet the team, ask questions and continue the conversation about life at the school, from wherever they are.
Happiness Hour: Friday 15 May, 5:00pm to 6:00pm Gecko Cafeteria, Kite Beach Dubai
An informal gathering for the Ash Mount community at one of Dubai’s most loved outdoor destinations. No agenda, no presentations. Just good company and an hour that belongs to the people who are choosing to be part of this school.
From the Classroom to the Slopes: DXB Snow Run Sunday 17 May, 8:30am Ski Dubai
Ash Mount staff teams have signed up for the DXB Snow Run at Ski Dubai. A small detail, perhaps. But a telling one. The people who will be at the heart of this school community from September are already showing up for each other.
Open Day 4: Sunday 17 May
Ash Mount Open Day hosted at South View School
For more information or to register your interest: ad********@******nt.ae or +971 52 3054989
Further Reading:
- Exclusive Interview with Founding Principal Abigail Fishbourne on the Vision for Ash Mount School
- Inside Ash Mount School’s Family First Approach to Education