Career Discovery Programme
Riverbend International, Dubai
Academic Year 2025–2026 · Term 2 · Generated 1 May 2026
1 · Programme overview
Riverbend International has implemented the Pave career discovery programme across every year group from KG (Foundation Stage) to Grade 12 for the 2025–2026 academic year. The programme delivers 195 sessions, 15 per year group, across six developmental bands from Foundation (KG) and Awareness (Grades 1–2) to Decision (Grades 11–12). The KG year was added in September 2026 to meet FutuReady indicator 1.1, which requires the programme to run “from KG (Foundation Stage (FS)) through Grade 12 (Year 13)”.
1.1 · Curriculum scope
| Band | Grades | Theme | Sessions | Year-end output |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Foundation | KG | Grown-ups have jobs, and I like things | 15 | “My book of jobs and likes” |
| Awareness | 1–2 | The world has many jobs | 30 | "Jobs I've heard of" journal |
| Exploration | 3–5 | What do people actually do? | 45 | Annual interest profile |
| Self-Discovery | 6–8 | Who am I and what am I drawn to? | 45 | Top 3 career clusters with reasoning |
| Direction | 9–10 | Narrow and test hypotheses | 30 | 3–5 hypotheses + 2-year action plan |
| Decision | 11–12 | Execute. University. Beyond. | 30 | University acceptance + post-graduation plan |
1.2 · Research grounding
Every session in the curriculum is grounded in established career development research. Primary frameworks include:
- Holland's RIASEC (Holland, 1997) — used in formal interest inventories
- Super's Life-Span, Life-Space Theory (Super, 1953/1990) — establishes the K–12 developmental arc
- Gottfredson's Circumscription (Gottfredson, 1981) — informs the deliberate counter-stereotyping in primary grades
- Social Cognitive Career Theory (Lent, Brown & Hackett, 1994) — underpins the side-project sprint and informational interview design
- VIA Character Strengths (Peterson & Seligman, 2004) — used in Grade 6
- Gatsby Benchmarks (Holman, 2014) — eight benchmarks for good career guidance, all addressed
- 16 Career Clusters Framework — provides industry territory mapping in Grade 7
2 · FutuReady standards
Evidence is presented against the nine standards in the FutuReady Framework for Schools (KHDA, 2026), the Dubai standards for academic guidance and career readiness. Indicator wording throughout is quoted from the framework, which governs. Schools have a three-year window to implement.
Two categories are used deliberately. System evidence is produced by the platform from live delivery data and can be re-generated at any time. School artefact is a document, a signature or a decision that no software can produce and that the school owns. Nothing in the second category is reported as met by the system.
| Standard | What the framework requires | Status |
|---|---|---|
| 1 · Formal programme | Structured programme across all grades from KG (FS) through Grade 12, embedded across subjects and co-curricular activity, with measurable outcomes | 195 sessions across 13 year groups. Measurable outcome defined per grade. Subject embedding is a school artefact. |
| 2 · Future skills | Life skills, soft skills and six named literacies embedded, connected to careers, and tracked | All 195 sessions tagged against the framework’s thirteen skills and literacies. Tracking live. Seven of thirteen thinly covered, listed below. |
| 3 · Leadership and staff | Designated leader, qualified staff, defined roles and continuing professional development | School artefact. Staffing ratios and the qualification requirement are the school’s to evidence. |
| 4 · University, TVET and career pathways | Guidance across university, TVET and apprenticeships; student profiles and destination tracking from Grade 10 | Pathway content and destination data present. TVET and apprenticeship coverage is a known gap. |
| 5 · Experiential learning | Workplace exposure from Grade 6, reflection, employer partnerships, full access for students of determination | Shadow day, informational interview and side-project sprint in place. Accessible alternatives not yet designed. |
| 6 · Labour market insights | Current labour market information in the curriculum and available to students through a school platform | Trend content present at four points. No live labour market data feed. |
| 7 · Family and community | Structured family engagement, alumni and employer involvement | Family sessions in every year group, KG to Grade 12. Parent portal live. |
| 8 · Digital and future-ready | Digital and AI literacy, safe and ethical technology use, digital portfolios | Portfolio and AI literacy live, including a session on critiquing AI output. Safe and ethical use is not taught. |
| 9 · Youth-centred and inclusive | Equitable access, a multidisciplinary team including SEN specialists, personalised support plans, inclusive mentoring | Not yet addressed. See section 7. |
2.1 · A defect in the published framework
The text of indicator 2.1 is a word-for-word copy of indicator 1.1. The two are 99.7% identical and the only difference is the insertion of the word “to”. Nothing in 2.1’s sentence mentions skills or literacies, which is plainly what Standard 2 is about.
This school therefore evidences 2.1 against the standard’s overview and practices, both of which are unambiguous, rather than filing its 1.1 evidence a second time. The discrepancy has been raised with KHDA.
2.2 · Skills coverage, measured
Every session is tagged against the thirteen skills and literacies the framework names. Coverage is uneven and the thin areas are reported rather than averaged away:
| Skill or literacy | Sessions | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Negotiation | 2 | Named in the framework’s practices as a target of co-curricular activity |
| Resilience | 3 | Concentrated in Grade 12, where it is least teachable |
| Media literacy | 7 | One of the six named literacies |
| Leadership | 7 | Named in the practices |
| Digital literacy | 8 | Present in most sessions, named in few learning outcomes |
| Innovation | 8 | Named in the practices |
| Numeracy | 10 | One of the six named literacies |
| Career literacy | 106 | Strongest coverage |
Leadership, negotiation and innovation are named together in the framework’s practices as what co-curricular activity should build. Three of the school’s four thinnest areas. This is an improvement action in section 7, not a claim of compliance.
3 · Delivery this term (2025–2026, Term 2)
The school is on track across all bands. Aggregate metrics:
- Sessions delivered: 152 of 180 scheduled (84%)
- Certified teachers: 43 across the three certification tiers
- Average student NPS: 4.2 / 5 (across 1,247 students)
- Parent engagement: 78% of families attended at least one showcase or family conversation evening
- Teacher satisfaction with Pave platform: 4.4 / 5
3.1 · Per-band breakdown
| Band | Students | Sessions delivered | Certified teachers | Engagement |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Awareness (G1–2) | 218 | 28 / 30 (93%) | 8 | High |
| Exploration (G3–5) | 312 | 41 / 45 (91%) | 12 | High |
| Self-Discovery (G6–8) | 287 | 38 / 45 (84%) | 9 | High |
| Direction (G9–10) | 194 | 22 / 30 (73%) | 6 | Mid (action being taken) |
| Decision (G11–12) | 236 | 23 / 30 (77%) | 8 | High |
4 · Evidence of student progress
Earlier versions of this report carried a named sample portfolio, including a student’s verbatim reflection. That has been removed. A pseudonym attached to a real reflection, a real RIASEC code and a real parent attendance record does not anonymise a child in a school where one Grade 6 cohort exists, and a reflection given to a counselor was not given to an inspection panel.
The platform enforces this rather than relying on whoever assembles the report. An inspector account cannot open a student portfolio at all, and any payload leaving the system has names, identifiers and contact fields stripped in code. What is presented instead is distribution:
| Measure | Grade 6 cohort | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Sessions completed, median | 7 of 15 | Mid-year, on track |
| Students with a recorded reflection | 91% | 2.3 requires students to reflect regularly |
| Students with at least one skill event | 100% | Automatic on session completion |
| Students with a self-set goal | 64% | 2.3 requires goal setting. Improvement action in section 7 |
| Students with no skill events | 0 | The most useful number here. These are the students a programme loses |
Individual portfolios remain available to the student, their parent and their counselor under the permissions set out in section 5. They are not an inspection artefact.
5 · Compliance and data protection
5.1 · UAE PDPL alignment
Pave maintains technical and organisational safeguards appropriate to the personal data it processes: access control enforced on the server and covered by automated tests, access codes stored hashed, and export of a school's own record and portfolios at any time, so a school holds its evidence without depending on Pave.
For school deployments, the school generally acts as Data Controller and Pave as Data Processor on the school's documented instructions; the agreement records where the data sits and who may reach it. Detailed security documentation is provided as part of a school's due-diligence review.
5.2 · Child safeguarding
- Designated Safeguarding Lead nominated at school level
- All informational interview hosts vetted under school safeguarding policy
- Shadow-day placements documented with consent and risk assessment
- Incident response plan in place; tested annually
5.3 · Parental consent
- Granular consent captured at student enrolment, refreshable annually
- Per-feature consent (AI use, data sharing, photographs, etc.)
- Revocable at any time via the parent portal
- Audit log of consent changes preserved for 7 years
6 · Outcomes (mid-year indicators)
Full outcome data will be available at year-end and from the longitudinal pilot study currently underway. Mid-year indicators:
- Career hypothesis confidence: Grade 9 students report mean confidence of 6.4/10 in their career hypotheses, up from 4.1/10 at the start of the year
- Cross-cluster skill self-rating: Grade 4–5 students show 23% improvement in self-assessed problem-solving and communication skills
- Stereotype-narrowing index: Grade 5 students show measurably broader career imagination than the baseline cohort (compared to schools without the programme)
- University application readiness: Grade 11 students report 34% reduction in essay-anxiety scores compared to last year's cohort, attributed to the portfolio-mining approach
7 · Outstanding items
Reported against the framework rather than against internal targets. Items are listed with an owner because an improvement plan without one does not happen.
| Standard | Gap | Owner | By |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9 | Standard 9 is not yet addressed. No provision designed for students of determination: no accessible assessment route, no transition planning, no inclusive mentoring. The career professional is not currently on the Inclusion Support Team. | Inclusion Lead with Careers Lead | Term 1, 2026-27 |
| 4.1 | TVET and apprenticeship pathways are not covered. Destination data is university degrees only, and the framework names the three together. | Careers Lead | Term 2, 2026-27 |
| 8.2 | Safe, responsible and ethical technology use, including personal data and digital footprint, is not taught in any session. | Careers Lead with ICT | Term 2, 2026-27 |
| 6.2 | No live labour market data available to students. Trend content is narrative and dates. | Careers Lead | Term 2, 2026-27 |
| 2.1 | Seven of thirteen skills thinly covered. Leadership, negotiation and innovation are named in the framework’s practices and are three of the four thinnest. | Careers Lead with Activities Lead | Term 3, 2026-27 |
| 1.1 | Subject embedding evidenced in two departments only. The framework asks for all subjects. | Careers Lead with Heads of Department | Rolling |
| 5.3 | No accessible alternative designed for workplace exposure. The framework names virtual job shadowing and in-school simulations. | Careers Lead with Inclusion Lead | Term 1, 2026-27 |
| 2.3 | Goal setting at 64% of the cohort. Skills tagging is 40 of 195 human-confirmed; the rest were inferred from session titles and are labelled draft. | Careers Lead | Term 2, 2026-27 |
Eight open items across five standards. The school judges Standard 9 the most serious and has sequenced it first.
8 · Inspector access
The KHDA inspection team has on-demand read-only access to:
- Aggregate engagement and completion data (anonymised, school-level)
- The FutuReady evidence dashboard, regenerated live from delivery data
- Skills coverage across the curriculum, by standard and by year group
- Teacher certification records
- Parent communication archive (newsletters, showcases, conversation guides)
- Curriculum-to-framework mapping documentation (full traceability)
Access can be provisioned via the Pave admin dashboard. Contact Dr. Hala Awad, Head of School at head@riverbend.school.
Report generated by Pave Career Discovery Platform · 1 May 2026
For questions: rahul@pavetheway.ai