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Office Depot Inc., a successful and flourishing global supplier of office products, played its unique and exciting ‘Win Your Steps’ game at The Avenues Mall inviting all kids visiting the mall to enjoy an evening filled with fun, entertainment and great prizes out of the new Office Depot Back To School collection.

Children of all age groups gathered around the big and colorful playing field waiting for their turn to throw the dice and ‘Win their Steps’ to reach the final grand prize. Throughout the game, all participating kids could win colorful Office Depot items of the new collection.

“We are very happy to celebrate our first Back To School collection in Kuwait with these children,” said John Moore, Business Director of Office Depot in the Middle East. “Caring for kids and bringing fun and excitement to them, this is what we we’re aiming for and this is what we achieved. The event clearly reflects the spirit of the Back to School campaign. Fun and entertainment are part of our commitment to taking care of students’ back to school needs”, he added.

“Kids will certainly love the great assortment of trendy, ‘must-have’ fashionable products at Office Depot and parents will love Office Depot because it is a one-stop shopping destination for all school supplies and offering great value for money.”

From kindergarten to high school and even college, the newly launched Office Depot flagship store located at The Avenues Mall is the one stop shop for everything needed for a successful school year. As part of the Office Depot motto ‘Taking Care of You for School’ the brand is introducing a product line that’s stylish and fashionable. Office Depot has all the items on the school lists, and the cool, fun and trendy products that students want for heading back to the classroom.

This year’s Back To School highlights and trends include a wide range of backpacks, pencil cases and complete Back To School sets. The collection offers special designs of Disney characters (Barcode Kitties, Hannah Montana, High School Musical 3, Camp Rock, Transformers, Wolverine, Ice Age 3, Princess, Cars, Winnieh the Pooh and Mickey Mouse) as well as products of other brands such as Dora the Explorer, Chipie, Airness, Palladium and Esprit. Colorful notebooks, hard cover books, files and folders and a variety of pens and pencils, writing tools featuring Office Depot brands like niceday, foray and Office Depot as well as renown international brands such as Bic, papermate, charpie, Crayola are also available, making shopping at Office Depot an easy and convenient ‘Back To School’ shopping experience.

DUBAI  A major operator of Indian schools in Asia unveiled plans yesterday to open a new facility in the emirate.

The Singapore-based Global Indian Foundation (GIF), which bills itself as the largest network of Indian schools in South East Asia, announced a partnership with the Dubai franchise of Score Plus.

The intention is to establish the Global Indian International School (GIIS) of Dubai.

Score Plus, which offers standardised test preparation courses throughout Asia and the Middle East, will own the school. The GIF will oversee teaching.

Although the GIF is a charity, the Dubai school is intended to be a profit-making venture.

If approval is granted by Dubai’s schools regulator, the Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA), the new facility could be in operation by April 4.

In its first year, the school would teach pupils up to grade six, using the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations curriculum.

It would also offer Montessori-based teaching, a child-centred, alternative educational method.

The school would operate the International Baccalaureate diploma programme in future.

The partnership is positioning the school, to be housed in a refurbished government building in Mankhool, as an alternative to Dubai Modern High School.

Last year, Dubai Modern said it would raise its fees by 90 per cent over two years to finance its Dh180 million (US$49m) move to a new state-of-the-art campus.

When the rise was first announced last December, a parent committee and a 690-member Facebook group was established to fight the increases.

In February, the committee surveyed more than 900 parents representing 1,300 pupils. Two thirds said they would look for alternative schooling over the next two years.

“Because of recent happenings, there is a tremendous interest in GIIS,” said Maneesh Tripathi, the chief executive and director general of the GIIS in Singapore, alluding to Dubai Modern’s fees increase.

Richard Forbes, a spokesman for GEMS Education, the parent company of Dubai Modern, said the school had earned a brilliant academic reputation over many years.

“GEMS believes the facilities at the new campus are the best of any Indian day-school in the world, so we have no difficulty in welcoming competition into the market.

“The school is full, with enrolments up on last year and 400 new online registrations for next April.”

Mr Forbes added that inspectors had recently informed the school principal that 67 per cent of Dubai Modern parents had filled out a KHDA questionnaire as part of a school inspection last month.

He said results showed that parents were very happy with Dubai Modern and the inspectors told the principal that parent engagement could not have been better.

Kamal Kalwani, the chief executive of Score Plus, indicated that fees at GIIS of Dubai would probably be lower than Dubai Modern’s tuition, although he declined to give exact figures.

“The school will be positioned as mid-market,” he said, adding that it would pay “top dollars” to attract the best teachers.

Mr Tripathi said quality of education and instruction were GIIS’s top priority.

“Wherever we have gone we have changed the landscape,” he said.