One of Bahrain’s biggest foreign education investors says expansion plan is still on despite regional headwinds

Early signals from Bahrain’s private K-12 sector are pointing to the same resilience that most of GCC’s leading educators showed during the fall semester. The American School of Bahrain, one of the Kingdom’s leading international schools, started the fall term with less than 4% off enrollment projections, kept its teachers through a two-month shutdown, and says campus expansion is still on the table.

Why this matters: Education is important for the Bahraini economy. It contributes about 4% of the GDP, with some 288 institutions serving about 1.5 mn people. The private sector runs 76 of those schools, accounts for 3% of the private sector workforce, and sits on one of the highest Bahrainization rates of any sector. Bahrain also hosts the oldest regulated school system in the Gulf — the first modern school in the region opened there in 1919.

REMEMBER- Private education recovery in the GCC came in uneven, as we laid out last month. Qatar’s premium networks filled their seats on the back of single-gender Qatari demand; Kuwait saw enrollment slip under a tightening citizenship regime and a fee-cap system squeezing operator margins; the UAE’s largest operators — Gems, Taaleem and Nord Anglia — reported their strongest retention in a decade. ASB’s experience lines up towards the top end of that spectrum

That’s the backdrop to our conversation with Tammam Abushakra, advisor to the chairman and board member at Esol Education, the Dubai-headquartered network behind ASB. Esol runs 10 schools across six countries — the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, Hong Kong, Cyprus and Lebanon — serves 12.5k students, and marks its 50th anniversary this academic year. In Bahrain, Esol holds a majority stake in ASB, now in its seventh year, and is a minority shareholder and strategic partner in the American University of Bahrain, which opened in 2019. Edited excerpts of our conversation over email:

ENTERPRISE: How does ASB’s day-one attendance and finalized registration compare to your pre-season benchmarks?

TAMMAM ABUSHAKRA: We opened the academic year strong, with new enrollment consistent with prior years. ASB’s 2026-27 enrollment is less than 4% below our projections, and we expect mid-year entries to close most of that gap, as is typical for the cycle. The community has remained stable, with growing demand in middle and high school and some grades even having enrollment waitlists.

E: What did the operational disruption look like on the ground, and how did it hit things like teacher retention and curriculum pacing?

TA: ASB moved to online learning as soon as guidance came down and resumed in-person classes within seven weeks. Having opened in 2020-21 and run online from day one through the Covid pandemic, the pivot was familiar — online in early March, back in-person in mid-April, with minimal impact on curriculum coverage. There also hasn’t been a systemic impact on fees payments — we handled individual fee queries case-by-case under applicable regulations and didn’t need a blanket accommodation policy.

The culture Esol and ASB have built since launch has translated into high teacher retention and a strong cohort of new hires for 2026-27. ASB benefits from shared expertise, resources, and central support across the Esol group.

E: What’s ASB operating at today, and has this period shifted how Esol evaluates Bahrain as a K-12 investment market?

TA: ASB is at about 70% of campus capacity in 2026-27, in line with our seventh-year projections. We have a plan to expand the campus as we approach capacity. Bahrain remains an important market for Esol, and we see long-term value in the Kingdom. That’s why Esol is among the largest foreign investors in Bahrain’s education sector. Our focus in Bahrain for the coming years will be the continued growth and development of ASB and AUBH.