‘Never thought it would get to this size and scale’: the story behind Dubai’s Pristine Private School

Even though Shahida Salam, the Pakistani founder of Pristine Private School in Dubai, said she doesn’t have any dreams, she did set out with a goal three decades ago: to create a school with a ‘home away from home’ environment. And the desire to provide even just one good teacher to the students who came there.

“One good teacher is enough for a lifetime.” she told Asma Mustafa in Aaj News’ show In the Arena, which aired earlier this week.

Pristine prides itself on being an affordable school following the UK curriculum. Annual fees start from AED 19,988 for Foundation Stage 1 and go up to AED 25,038 for Year 13. Their Junior Campus is a purpose-built, state-of-the-art campus for FS1 to Year 2 while the Main Campus is equipped with technology integrated learning experiences.

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Elaborating on her 33 year journey since starting the school in the neighborhood of Al Garhoud, Shahida said: “I started with a three bedroom villa with just five students. Then we got the villa next door, then another one and so on.”

“The government wanted us to take the school beyond grade six and we came to know the ministry will award us land if we were able to build within a certain timeframe. And now we are on our third campus.”

Yet education was not her first calling. As far back as she can remember, she wanted to become a doctor “and would have given anything to do that.”

She studied at a medical college in Lahore for three years but got married before she could finish and ended up moving to Dubai and raising four children.

“When the kids had grown up my husband floated the idea of opening a school. For a long time, I resisted but when I finally decided to do it, I went for it wholeheartedly.”

At the time, Shahida studied at home and completed her BSc, noting that “it’s never too late to learn.”

“This school is a miracle, a gift from God. We were lucky to have found like-minded people who were in it to make a difference and create something unique. This school is entirely built on good intentions and the desire to give back.”

Speaking highly of the country she has called home since 1972, Shahida said: “If there were just two, three more countries like the UAE the world would be a much better place.”

“When I pray for my parents in the same breath I pray for the founders of this nation, what a country they have made. More than 200 nationalities live here and it’s grown from a sleepy fishing village. Everyone comes here with a dream for a better future and there is a lot of government support.”

Taking Pristine to greater heights

After more than three decades, Shahida has taken a step back and her son, a corporate banker, is poised to take over.

Fahd Salam was 12 years old when the school was founded.

“We never thought it would get to this size and scale. Meanwhile I was focused on making a career for myself and being independent, but when I did an MBA it gave me the bug of doing something of my own”.

“When I moved back to the UAE I interacted a lot more with the people working in the school and listening to my parents’ stories - the school was growing and they needed help. It ticked a lot of boxes for me and I thought this could be a fantastic platform to help my parents and grow the organization.”

Though Fahd admits it can be challenging working with parents, both mother and son agree that their aspiration for the school is to see it grow and improve.

“I believe in continuous improvement. That’s been my ethos throughout. What I’m working towards is improving the facilities, improving access to education, and the quality of education,” said Fahd.

“I’m very proud to say we have students going to Stanford, NYU, LSC, Lums, IBA. We have people (former students) working at Tesla, Siemens, Standard Chartered, various different organizations. So that gives me a lot of pride.”

Pristine has also been in the news recently for getting a 100 per cent pass rate in the Cambridge International Examinations held in May/June 2025.

“27 percent of all the grades that we got were A-star. So my focus is building upon that, taking it further.”

When asked about the future of education given the advent of AI, and what qualities he would like to see in his students, Fahd said “the ability to be inquisitive, that is something that schools need to instill.”

“You have access to all this information on the tip of your fingers. You can use ChatGPT, or Google to answer any question, but that desire to ask the question, that’s the kind of mindset schools need to enable”.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2025