This Dubai school will let AI set the pace, and teachers do the mentoring

GEMS Education has unveiled GR8 School, a model that lets students work through core subjects at their own pace with AI-powered software, with teachers acting as one-to-one mentors rather than classroom lecturers. The first GR8 School soft launches in January 2027, though GEMS hasn’t said which campus will host it or how many students it will take.

GR8 will start as a “school within a school”, a separate pathway inside existing GEMS campuses. The company says it is designed to work across its school segments and price points, and that it will not suit every child. Chairman and Founder Sunny Varkey said GEMS expects it to appeal to “a select group of students who are ready for greater independence, personalisation and ownership of their learning.”

How the GR8 day works

The model has three parts. An adaptive learning system lets students move through core academic material at their own speed, continually assessing what they have mastered and where they need support. Teachers, whom GEMS calls human mentors, use that live data to spend most of their time on one-to-one help and on the practical parts of the curriculum. The third part connects students with industry specialists, practitioners and projects, based on their interests and ambitions. GEMS groups these people together as the GR8 Learning Collective.

The timetable changes too. A student’s day combines asynchronous, self-paced study with roughly 90 minutes to two hours of teacher-led sessions, supported by external experts. An additional two to three hours go to enrichment: projects, sport, the arts, and practical application. The curriculum also emphasises critical thinking, communication, teamwork and financial literacy, a theme GEMS has already pursued through its financial literacy partnership with LEAP.

Fees and what’s still unknown

Final fees will vary by school, market and model, and GEMS will confirm them closer to launch. For now, it gives indicative annual ranges of about US$8,000 to US$10,000 for affordable offerings and US$20,000 to US$40,000 for premium ones.

GEMS says it will use the months before launch to keep developing and testing the learning technology, academic model, teacher and guide roles, and its network of specialists. It hasn’t named the AI platform or vendor behind the learning system, nor said which curricula GR8 students will follow or how their results will be assessed.

The announcement comes as Dubai’s leadership explores new approaches to education and how future school models can respond to changing student needs and the world of work, according to GEMS. The company, which says it educates more than 200,000 students from over 176 nationalities, describes GR8 as a global first. That claim comes from GEMS itself, and we haven’t independently verified it.

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