Case study: Codifying great teaching across GEMS Education

GEMS Education, one of the world’s largest and longest-running private K-12 education providers, operates 47 schools across the UAE and Qatar, serving over 140,000 students from 180 nationalities across four curricula: British, American, Indian, and IB. With over 15,000 educators, GEMS sought to create a unified, evidence-informed model of world-class teaching across its network. 

Given the diversity of GEMS schools and the scale of the network, the challenge lay in achieving consistency in instructional quality and professional development. Leaders identified the need for a shared framework that could clearly define great teaching, translate research into practice, and ensure every teacher had the tools and language to deliver high-impact lessons.

GEMS developed the Teach Like a GEM (TLAG) Playbook, a codified instructional framework that translates great teaching into clear, practical steps. It brings together eighteen evidence-informed techniques drawn from the work of Doug Lemov, Barak Rosenshine, and Daniel Willingham. Each technique is rooted in cognitive science and breaks teaching down into precise classroom actions that help every child know more, understand more, and remember more.

To drive implementation, GEMS partnered with Steplab, because it is a user-friendly professional development platform designed for precision coaching, feedback, and deliberate practice. Steplab provided the infrastructure to systematise instructional design and professional growth at scale, enabling consistent, high-quality instructional coaching across all schools.

GEMS built a bespoke TLAG Library within Steplab, aligning every technique, micro-step and rehearsal task with our TLAG Playbook. All middle and senior leaders completed Steplab’s Coaching Skills Builder course to strengthen their feedback and coaching expertise. Leaders also received in-person training from the Steplab team. The recent introduction of Steplab’s Group PD Builder has been transformative, streamlining the design and delivery of Practice Clinics and given valuable time back to professional learning leads. School leaders use Steplab’s analytics dashboard to interpret trends from drop-ins, shoutouts, and coaching reflections, using real-time data to drive informed decisions and continuous improvement.

While Steplab provides advanced technology, GEMS credits the success of the partnership to its human connection. The Steplab team communicates proactively with GEMS, offering timely insights, tailored suggestions, and implementation support across all schools. This ongoing collaboration has built such strong alignment that Steplab feels like an extension of GEMS, a trusted partner working side by side to embed TLAG with fidelity and impact.

The GEMS and Steplab collaboration has led to:

• 1.
  Greater coherence in instructional language and practice across all schools
• 2.
  Personalised, immediate feedback through drop-ins and 1:1 instructional coaching
• 3.
  A shift from evaluative lesson observations to an open-door culture of developmental drop-ins
• 4.
  Whole-school PD that now embeds modelling, rehearsal, and deliberate practice for contextualised learning
• 5.
  Sharper, data-informed decision-making through Steplab’s analytics dashboard
• 6.
  Stronger alignment between professional learning, classroom practice, and student outcomes

Sarah Warncken, Vice Principal at GEMS Wellington Academy Al Khail who were GEMS’ earliest Steplab adopters, highlighted the positive impact a strong, evidence-informed PD programme has had on teaching quality:

“This year we celebrated some of our best A Level and BTEC results, and we performed far better than we had anticipated in our GCSE outcomes. A huge number of factors translate to improved outcomes for students, but I am confident that the marked improvement in classroom practice through Steplab have played a key role.”

Through this system-wide transformation, GEMS is demonstrating that when thousands of educators share a common professional language and when instructional coaching sits at the heart of professional learning, great teaching becomes the norm, not the exception.

Looking to build a culture of consistent, evidence-informed teaching across your school or network? Book a demo to discover how Steplab can help you embed high-impact professional development at scale.