🇦🇪 Dubai · Schools
Schooling and childcare in Dubai
Effectively all expatriate schooling is private and fee-paying, every school is inspected and rated by KHDA, and the highly rated ones fill a year ahead.
The thing people get wrongChoose the school before the flat. Dubai's schools are scattered across the city, the traffic is unforgiving on the school run, and a forty-minute bus each way is a genuine cost to a seven-year-old. Families who sign a tenancy first routinely regret it.
A private-only market, rated in public
Government schools teach in Arabic and are, in practice, for Emirati children, so expatriate families use the private sector. The Knowledge and Human Development Authority inspects every private school annually and publishes a rating from Outstanding down to Very Weak, along with the fee schedule. That rating is the most useful single filter you have, and it also constrains what the school may charge and by how much fees can rise.
- Curricula: British is the largest, then Indian, American and IB, with French, German and others represented.
- KHDA ratings and approved fees are published per school and per year group.
- Indian-curriculum schools generally run an April-to-March year; British and IB schools start in late August or early September.
Applying
Applications go directly to each school, not through a central system, so families apply to several. Expect an age-appropriate assessment — often CAT4 or an in-house paper — an interview, and reports from the last two years. Transfer certificates from the previous school are required and, for some countries and curricula, must be attested before the school will accept them.
- Documents: passport and visa copies, Emirates ID, birth certificate, immunisation record, last two years' reports.
- Transfer certificate from the departing school, attested where required.
- A registration fee is payable to hold the place and is normally credited against the first term's fees.
- Popular year groups — reception and the entry years — fill first; mid-year entry is possible but limited.
The costs beyond tuition
Tuition is billed by term, usually three a year, and is only part of it. Transport is charged separately and is not cheap, uniforms and devices are mandatory, and trips and examination entry fees are extra. Some employers pay a school allowance and cap it per child, so establish that number early — it tends to determine which tier of school is realistic.
- School bus: charged annually and priced by distance zone.
- Uniform, books, devices and activities are billed on top of tuition.
- Fees are payable termly and in advance; a term's notice is usually required to withdraw.
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