Doha College

Mobile Toggle

Breadcrumb

Sticky CTA buttons

Award Winning

Doha College has been recognised as a beacon of excellence by independent organisations, who honoured us with many accolades through the years. Our students too shone in external competitions and received varied distinctions. Swipe trough the three galleries below to see some of the achievements that have transcended the sphere of Doha College, and tap to learn more about each one.

School Awards

In 2016, Doha College became the first school in Qatar to be awarded an Eco-Schools Green Flag from the Foundation for Environmental Education. The Eco-Schools programme is delivered to 49,000 schools across 64 countries by NGOs in these countries, and coordinated from the Denmark based, Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE).  Doha College was the first school to be awarded the coveted Eco-Schools status directly from FEE Head Office, under their new scheme for international schools. The award was granted following a vigorous inspection which looked into all the sustainable initiatives being run by the school. 

Green Flag - Secondary School

Doha College has won the International Impact Award at the 2017 British International School of the Year awards, beating competition from schools all over the world. This category is awarded to a school in recognition of the impact the school has made to education within its host country. The British International School Awards celebrate innovation in strategic, financial and educational projects in qualifying schools. They are organised by the British International Schools magazine with the support of ISC Research.  Schools competed in ten categories against British International schools across the world. 

BIS International Impact Award

In 2017, Doha College became the first school in Qatar to be accredited under the new Patron’s Accreditation and Compliance scheme offered by the Council of British International Schools (COBIS) as an alternative to the British School Overseas (BSO) accreditation. COBIS CEO, Colin Bell, said “Doha College has set the benchmark for what we and families worldwide are looking for in terms of quality in international British schools overseas and following the robust accreditation process, we’re hopeful that the schools that have already opted-in to The Patron’s Accreditation in the autumn will be of similar high standard.”

COBIS Patron’s Accreditation 

In 2018, Doha College became the first school in the world to receive the highly prestigious title of “HPL World Class School.” This triumph for international education in Qatar was earned after a two-year journey, during which Doha College ensured that the HPL approach pervaded all aspects of school life and became second nature to all its stake holders. High Performance Learning is a global movement for change. At its heart is the serious belief that almost all learners are capable of high performance and that by making this belief the explicit philosophy for the school and adjusting practice to focus on systematically building the relevant cognitive competencies, far more learners will become successful.  HPL provides a framework which school leaders can adapt to transform learning – actively involving students and their parents in the learning journey and presenting schooling as a quest for cognitive success.

HPL World-Class Award

Doha College is known for its work to create a greener environment and towards sustainability. In 2016, its Secondary School became the first in Qatar to be awarded a Green Flag by the Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE). In 2018, the Primary School managed to mirror this feat, thanks to tireless work educating the children on environmental matters. Each year, DC Primary appoints a team of dedicated “Eco-Warriors”, who champion environmentally friendly attitudes and support the various drives like paper recycling, composting, monitoring the use of electricity, of single-use and disposable products etc.

Green Flag - Primary School

The “Qatar Eco-Schools Congress 2019” event was attended by 27 schools, 171 students, 40 teachers and 13 exhibitors. It aimed to create a networking gathering between schools and the community, to offer a platform where they could share experiences, best practices, challenges and solutions in their journey to become a Green Flag awarded school. DC submitted a video called “I’ve Got the Power”, which showed the changes the students hoped to see in the way we treat our environment. The video went on to win the trophy of the category and brought back to school the “Maker Majlis SDGs Award.” SDG stands for sustainable development goals, and the award recognizes civil society organizations, private sector leaders and individuals who have advanced SDGs on the global stage.

Maker Majlis SDGs Award

in 2019, the Council of British International Schools (COBIS) has announced Doha College as one of its first-ever cohort of COBIS Training Schools, launched as part of its ongoing strategic work to support schools with the current teacher supply challenge, both in the UK and overseas. The COBIS Training Schools initiative is a badging and quality assurance scheme to enable schools to demonstrate the breadth and quality of their commitment to professional development, with an emphasis on Initial Teacher Training (ITT), career progression routes and whole school workforce development. Trevor Rowell, COBIS Chairman, added: “High-quality international schools could play a greater role in training teachers in their locality. This can include TAs, support staff, alumni, parents, spouses – those already within the wider community of international schools – as well as suitable local and international staff, to reduce demand on domestic supply.”

COBIS Training School

Students representing Doha College

Qatar School Choir of the Year was brought to life in 2017 by a team of music teachers, parent volunteers and choir enthusiasts from Doha College, to add new breadth to the music education in the country. The inaugural edition saw the top two spots of the podium taken by Doha College choirs “Fortes” (ages 8-11) and the “Prestos” (ages 5-8), with Newton British School Choir claiming third place. Greg Beardsell, international choral expert and head adjudicator, stated: “I was surprised to see how much high-quality choral music was being achieved in Qatar. This competition is a great way of allowing school choirs to see each other perform and to learn how to make their standards of singing even higher. This competition was an incredible shared experience and a celebration of music, and I have been delighted to be a part of it.”

Qatar School Choir of the Year 

The 2019 edition of the British International Schools Qatar Games (BISQ) U11 brought together hundreds of children from a total of 14 British curriculum schools across the country. Two days of hard-fought competition saw the students excel at all six sports, namely boys’ football, girls’ football, basketball, netball, swimming and athletics. Doha College’s 36-strong team dominated the games from the very start, gaining four gold medals and two silver medals, which gave them the overall title of BISQ 2019 champions. They were clear toppers of the podium, also acceded by Al Khor International School in second place, and Park House English School in third. This was DC’s second consecutive title in the competition.

BISQ Games

Three out of the four teams put forward by Doha College for the 2017 Alice Middle East Programming Competition, earned a place on the winners’ podium. To make this achievement even more remarkable, it was the first time Doha College entered the competition, which now on its third edition. The competition was hosted by Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar (CMU-Q), and welcomed just under 40 teams from government and international schools across the country, that use the Alice Middle East software to learn computing as part of their Information Communication Technology (ICT) curriculum.

Alice Programming Competition

Launched in 2014 and the first of its kind in the state of Qatar, Doha College’s Medical Conference allows budding medical students to showcase their knowledge and in-depth research capabilities by presenting on the latest ground-breaking developments. In 2018, not one but two of the teams put forward by Doha College acceded the podium, in first and second place. “They are very bright pupils, who will make good doctors one day. They chose complicated topics and did well under questioning. They were not intimidated and showed they could think on their feet.” – Professor Peter Woodruff, Hamad Medical Centre.

Medical Conference

An invitation-only event, the annual inter-school competition organized by the Regatta Sailing club saw the Doha College teams coming away with the gold trophy on multiple editions. Sailing has been featuring on Doha College’s list of Co-Curricular Activities for many years, and it has sparked the love of this valuable life skill and most suitable outdoors pursuit in many students. It is also a very suitable venture in Qatar, given the warm waters that bless the shores of our host country.

Sailing

Doha College students claimed 1st and 2nd place in the Medical Conference hosted by Park House English School in March 2019. 2nd place by year 11 students Matteo Franceschi and Nina Nair for their research on the topic 'Yellow Fever - An infectious disease'; and 1st place by Umar Siddique and Sameen Anodiyil for the topic 'Genetic Modification in cancer treatment'.

DC students win Park House medical conference

A team of six Doha College students answered the call of Qatar National Library and Qatar Science Centre to devise a solution to a real-life scenario encountered every day by the library staff. They were Salil Joshi, Krishna Bhatia (Year 10), Jacobo Aguilar Torralba, Sebastian Inestroza Turcios, Robin Bloemers, Karina Zamora (Year 12), all IGCSE and A Level Design and Technology students. Their ingenious design of a stair-climbing book-carrier won first place, ahead of the products submitted by the American School of Doha (second place) and Qatar Academy of Science of Technology (third place).

DC students win QNL "Solutionists" challenge

Doha College’s “Prestos” choir brought the QSCOY trophy back home after a two-year pandemic-induced hiatus. The little singers won the 5-8 age category of the “Qatar School Choir of the Year 2023” with two energy-filled songs that stuck in the memories of all present. Sixteen choirs from across the country sang at incredibly high standards, on par with reputable international competitions, according to head adjudicator Greg Beardsell, leading international choral expert. Conductor Paulo Vicente, who lead the “Prestos” to victory, embodied all the qualities required for success: enthusiasm, energy, fun, decisiveness, clarity and - most of all - patience!

DC "Prestos" win their QSCoY age category

Qatar United English Speaking Schools (QUESS) and Qatar Private Primary Schools Sports Association (QPPSSA) are tournaments that offer students opportunities to compete in many sports. Historically, Doha College has almost always been on the podium. 2023 has been a particularly good year, with secondary school teams winning gold in football, basketball and volleyball, while primary students performed particularly well in cross country, while winning numerous various medals in other sports as well.

DC students win multiple QUESS and QPPSSA trophies

DC Students out in the world

A 30-strong group of Doha College students participated in the 2017 Qatar National Music Competition, which took place recently in Katara; quite astonishingly, more than half of them received awards and special jury prizes. This number excludes the 50 members of the Doha College “Fortes” Choir, who also won First Prize in their category. One of the most awarded young musicians was Prama Yudhistira, then in Year 10 at Doha College, who received no less than five awards: First Prize in the Piano – 18 and under category, Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra prize, best Chopin performance award, Indonesian Ambassador's Award and the Swiss Ambassador's Award.

Qatar National Music Competition

Yusuf Wali and Malek Hazem Elasskary participated in the World Union Karate Federation championship in the UK and won gold and bronze respectively. They also swept an armful of medals at the Karate International Tournament in Tbilisi, Georgia. Yusuf and Malek are both committed athletes who represent Doha College in local and regional competitions, and serve as wonderful role models in self-discipline, determination, and perseverance.

Karate champions

Lucie Murphy, Abi Falcous-Gill, Charlotte Finney and Yasmine Tobun were selected to represent not Doha College, not their club Doha RFC, but QATAR at the West Asian Rugby 7s tournament in Lebanon. The girls played for Doha Rugby Football Club and were all U17 players, making their selection for the senior Qatar team all the more impressive. The team had a very successful tournament, defeating every team they faced and won the final to become the inaugural West Asian Champions. In addition, Charlotte was named “2017-2018 Player of the Year” in her category by the Doha Rugby Football Club.

Rugby internationals (our girls)

An impressive 12 students were selected for the U18 team (full 15-a-side), three for the U16 team and three for the U14 team (7-a-side and 10-a-side for each) at the West Asia Rugby Championship. Ross Nelson, aged just 15, is the youngest player ever to have been selected to play in the U18 team. He gave us an insight into what this meant to him: “This selection was a huge honour to me; there are no words to describe this great privilege. Being an U15 playing in the U18 category brought not only fear but a great sense of responsibility, as I had to uphold my role on the field to the same standard of players three years older than me. I usually play for the Doha Rugby Football Club U15s, training five times a week. No matter whom I play for, be it DRFC, Qatar, Doha College or Ireland, I play with the same pride and to the best of my ability.”

Rugby internationals (our boys)

Jacub Hrinda was only in Year 10, aged 14, when he made history by becoming the youngest player to appear in a European Tour event, the Qatar Masters 2015. In 2016, Jakub came second in the Qatar Junior open, while his sister Laila took the ladies’ top spot. More recently, Jakub won the Turkish Open tournament. Another DC star golfer is Mikkel Per Mathiesen, who won the Qatar Junior Open and had many successful appearances on international courses.

Golfer Jakub Hrinda