Crisis readiness, safeguarding, pastoral wellbeing and teacher placement for schools across the GCC.
Crisis readiness, safeguarding, pastoral wellbeing and teacher placement for schools across the GCC.
Amana is the Arabic word for a sacred trust — something precious placed in your care, to be returned whole. We chose the name deliberately. Education is the closest thing our society has to that definition: a parent hands a child to a school, and a school hands that child to the teachers, counsellors, and leaders who will shape how they see themselves and the world.
We built Amana to be the partner schools can trust with the weight of that responsibility. Our training architecture, our safeguarding standards, our crisis readiness, and our approach to staff wellbeing are all built around one question — would we want this for our own children? If the answer is not yes, we do not offer it.
Schools are trained in where to take children during an incident. They are rarely trained in how to carry them through the ninety seconds when adrenaline hits and the adult in the room sets the emotional direction for every child around them. That ninety-second window is the most visible example of a wider discipline — the operational craft of holding a room through crisis, leading through disruption, and protecting children at the moments when protection is hardest.
Amana was founded on the observation that this craft has historically lived in military medicine, emergency services, and aviation — not in schools. We are building the framework to change that. The ninety-second window is where we begin. The work does not end there.
Amana's work is not tied to the current regional moment. The ability for a teacher to hold thirty children steady through a moment of crisis is a permanent discipline — applicable whether the threat is a missile alert, a medical emergency, a fire, a serious pastoral incident, or a bereavement that cascades through a year group. The moment has made the gap visible; the gap itself is not new.
Amana is a full education consultancy working with international schools across the GCC. Our work is organised around four capabilities that sit under a single commitment to every child's safe passage through school.
Operational training for school staff in how to communicate with children under acute stress. Delivered on-site, grounded in military and NATO crisis-management practice, and designed for exactly the environments schools face today. Founding cohort partnerships currently open — see the Certification section below.
Designated Safeguarding Lead training, policy and practice audit, safer-recruitment review, inspection-ready documentation, and independent oversight. Delivered with the care and attention required of every school’s most important responsibility — the safe passage of every child through their school day.
Structured wellbeing programmes for teachers and students — before, during and after periods of stress or disruption. Focused on retention, recovery, and the culture that prevents harm before it begins. Delivered in-person and through our digital learning environment.
UK-qualified educators placed into GCC schools, prepared through Amana's in-house pre-deployment programme. Backed by a guarantee structure that places the financial risk of a wrong hire with us, not with the school. Drawing on over 10,000 placements completed across the UK operation our founding team built from 2017.
Amana is developing a Crisis Readiness Certification framework for schools across the Gulf. It provides a recognisable, verifiable standard that tells parents their children's school has trained its staff to a consistent level in the operational disciplines that matter most in a moment of crisis.
The framework is being co-designed with a founding cohort of schools across the GCC. Founding partners shape the standard, are the first schools certified under it, and will be named publicly when the framework launches later this year.
Schools interested in founding-cohort membership can reach us directly at mark@amana-education.ae.
Amana is led by a small, senior team that brings together operational experience from defence and intelligence, a decade of UK education recruitment at scale, and fifteen years of GCC school relationships.
Seven years in military intelligence with HM Forces, including operational work in Afghanistan and the Balkans, followed by three years inside NATO's Situation Centre during the Libya and Syria conflicts. Certified Crisis Management Professional. Designated Safeguarding Lead for Education. Full NaCTSO ACT suite for education settings.
Fifteen years in the UAE education sector. Tala brings deep relationships across international schools in the Gulf, an intimate understanding of what school leaders value, and the cultural fluency to bridge British operational rigour with GCC expectations.
The operational backbone of Amana. Katie led the UK operation through ISO and REC accreditation, implemented paperless compliance systems, and oversees all compliance, finance, and pre-employment safeguarding. Her standards are non-negotiable — and that is precisely the point.
Head of Client Solutions
Education Consultant · Gulf Region
Education Consultant · Gulf Region
Before Amana, the founding team built one of the UK's most trusted education recruitment businesses — placing educators into regulated settings across education, social care, and government, and earning the trust of more than two hundred institutional partners.
Amana is the Gulf expression of everything that work taught us. The consultancy model, the rigour of pre-deployment preparation, the guarantee architecture, and the discipline of senior oversight on every engagement — all built in the UK, all now being brought to bear for schools across the GCC.
We work with a small number of schools at a time, by design. The first conversation costs nothing and carries no commitment — it is a chance to understand your institution and for you to understand whether Amana is the right partner.