“In Dubai, when you look around, you see that all the expats there rolled the dice. They made the decision to leave wherever they were, so they’re risk takers, they’re resilient, they’re adaptable, and they’re flexible. They’re people who have decided to give this life a go and see what happens.”
Vice-principal Ben Sharratt found success and a new life as an expat in Dubai, UAE, where he currently works at GEMS Wellington International School. From starting life as a ‘slightly talented’ (but, he admits, not the hardest working) student in Codsall, South Staffordshire, England, to running a school in one of the richest countries in the world, Ben has no regrets about the dice he chose to roll.
Discussing his early years, Ben says: “I didn’t always plan to go to university. I was sort of a traditional lad who wanted to be a professional footballer. At 16 or 17, I was with Stoke City, then Walsall as a goalkeeper, but that didn’t work out due to injury, and I’d also say a lack of commitment on my part.
“I excelled academically but I never found the work hard, and I probably just did enough to get by. I loved school, though, and that definitely contributed to me becoming a teacher.”
After knuckling down for his A-levels, Ben secured a place at Aston University to study podiatry. He soon realised the number of lectures plus daily commuting the course would require, so deferred entry for a year to work full-time for a local sport coaching company. Through that experience, Ben found that he loved coaching and was good at it.
Before Ben arrived at a career in teaching, he considered joining the police force. While his initial application was not successful, it led to a decision to study criminal justice at the University of Wolverhampton, which just happened to be where his brother had begun studying law the previous year. In many ways, the relationship that Ben and his twin Nick share has helped shape Ben’s life.
Ben said: “We’re identical twins and we are hugely close. I would describe us as best friends. I think that twins have a very unique bond. We were always competitive with each other, and I think we’ve both, equally, pushed one another forwards.
“At university, Nick was really into ultra-marathon running, so he was incredibly fit then. When you’re prepared to run, you know, three marathons in three days, that puts you in a high-performance environment. That’s been a big influence on me, too, and not just because of Nick – I’ve just always been comfortable in challenging environments.”
Ben enjoyed his undergraduate studies, especially the criminology and historical aspects, but by the end of his second year he realised that he wanted to pursue teaching. Rather than dropping out again and starting a teaching degree, he decided to complete the course and then follow a graduate teacher route in the West Midlands.
While Ben reached his teaching career in what he calls a “roundabout way,” he wouldn’t change a thing.
If you gave me my career to start over again, I would do the same thing. It’s an incredible privilege to be a teacher.
“I’m well aware that I joined a service industry and I’ve always been a proud servant, if that makes sense. I admire the tenacity of the Gen Z approach – these digital nomads who move from one career to another – but I think that working in schools with challenging circumstances gave me a chance to really make a difference.”
Ben became a primary school teacher known for going above and beyond in the classroom, and those early successes led to his first leadership role at a primary school that had been rated by Ofsted as underperforming.
He said: “I was a leader who didn’t know how to lead. I’d always worked really hard to get where I wanted to be, but I think that taking on a senior leadership position in a school in challenging circumstances required rapid change.
“The role took the emphasis away from me and the days when I wanted to impress and do well, and I realised that the focus should be on the children’s experience and the amazing things you can do for the community. I credit my time there as a real defining moment in my career.
Every week, I’d be expecting the phone to ring to say an inspector was coming in. There was a real pressure to give the children an education they deserve, and that pressure shaped my work ethic. I brought that attitude with me over to Dubai.
While Ben says he was happy teaching at that school and saw the potential for great career progression in Wolverhampton, his twin Nick had moved to Dubai. Ben visited his brother several times and was attracted to the opportunities that Dubai presented.
He said: “The draw of Dubai is the sunshine, the better salary, the better quality of life and maybe a better work/life balance. But really, I think the main pull was probably that my brother was there.
“I was in a relationship, but while I had grown very fond of the girl, it had only just started and was in the early stages of maturation. That meant that I had no real ties keeping me there.”
Having lived in the multicultural society of Wolverhampton, Ben was prepared for the diversity of multilingual students he would teach in Dubai, and says that he never found the adjustment from living in the UK to the UAE difficult.
He continued: “My brother and his partner were already here, so I knew people, but I would also credit two of my closest friends who still live here in Dubai. We met on the bus on the first morning of us joining the school. We were three lads of similar ages, and we started talking about football and who we support and realised very quickly that we shared similar interests.
“Not everyone here has the right mindset and not everyone spends 12 years here – but I think that people usually realise whether it’s right for them very quickly. I just embraced it – said yes to joining this team, said yes to going to that party, said yes to going to barbecues. Out here, your friends become your family.”
Ben was a senior leader in the UK and was offered a deputy headship of a Dubai school, but he decided to return to the classroom to take a role with GEMS Wellington International School. He soon progressed to middle leadership as Head of Primary English, and after a two-year hiatus at another institution, Ben returned to GEMS as Head of Lower School. That was in January 2020, just one month before Covid-19 and Dubai’s six-month lockdown.
Ben said: “Our teachers transitioned to online learning brilliantly, and our school was a real driver of the highest standards in online learning in Dubai. It was a hugely challenging time, but a hugely rewarding one too.”
Continuing to embrace high-performance environments, Ben has involved himself in education advisory work. Having been an advanced skills teacher in the UK, Ben took that pedagogy in practice to Dubai which led him to the SSAT, which is the Schools, Students and Teachers network from the UK that accredits lead practitioners and teachers. He has also led the Middle East Accreditation Centre for several years and been an advisory member for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), which is a huge education policy think tank commissioned globally to write and research around education, policy and practice.
In Ben’s current job, he is the vice-principal and leads on the standards of learning and teaching across the 3,000-student school. He remains as close to his brother Nick as ever, who lives in the next street down from him. Nick is a dispute resolution lawyer and the head of dispute resolution Middle East for Norton Rose Fulbright. As well as spending time together socially, Ben and Nick’s careers also have some slight overlap, in that Nick is the chair of the local advisory board for Ben’s school.
Ben maintains that he has no plans to move back to the UK.
He said: “If you asked me again in five years, then no, but ten? Fifteen? Maybe. This is where my career is, though. This is where my family are. I’ve got my brother and his wife, their two girls Sophie and Poppy, my fiancé Karen, who I’ve been with for eight years, and our three cats. That’s our little family, and we’re really happy.”
Sometimes, rolling the dice truly pays off.
