Dubai School Fees: Best value Dubai schools for budgeting families – the list

The KHDA has announced that Dubai private schools will be allowed to increase tuition fees for the 2024-25 academic year by up to 5.2%, based on their most recent inspection rating. 

School fees represent one of the largest outlays for many Dubai families, with 19% of parents saying they invest between 25% to more than 50% of their household income on their child’s education, according to an EdStatica.com survey of more than 10,000 Dubai parents.

With education representing such a significant proportion of many UAE parents’ expenses, it is important that families understand how to get good value for their money in education.

Click here to skip straight to the list of Best Value Dubai schools, ordered by KHDA rating and cost. 

The same EdStatica.com survey of more than 11,000 parents found that 54% of parents Totally Agree that their school’s fees represent good value for money, while 10% of parents Totally Disagree with this statement, and 36% Partially Agree.

While this data suggests that the majority of parents are quite happy with the value of their school fees, there are still a significant proportion who aren’t, or who feel it could be improved.

Many individual elements factor into whether a school represents value for your child – from their own sense of wellbeing in a school, to their sense of belonging and academic progress. But the most convenient, broadbrush way to see if a school offers good value for money is to compare the cost of a school against its KHDA inspection rating.

Although this rating is not the bottom line when it comes to a schools’ quality – you’ll need to read the SchoolsCompared.com or WhichSchooAdvisor.com review and ultimately visit the school for yourself to get that – it gives a useful, at-a-glance indication of what sort of standard you can expect.

 

What does the KHDA inspection rating mean? The private-education regulator in Dubai (the Knowledge and Human Development Authority, or KHDA) arranges annual school inspections, during which they assess a school’s quality based on a variety of criteria, and then award an inspection rating as a result. The inspection criteria consider everything from academic attainment, facilities, teaching quality and leadership, to student wellbeing, staff turnover and standards of inclusion for students with SEND. The possible ratings a school can have range from Outstanding to Very Good, Good, Acceptable, Weak and Very Weak.

Below we have listed all of the Outstanding, Very Good, and Good-rated schools in Dubai – so you can be assured they all offer decent quality – ranked in order of their cost, from the most affordable, to the most expensive…

Please note: the schools fees mentioned are taken from the KHDA Fees Fact Sheet for the academic year 2023-2024, which every Dubai school is required to submit annually. They represent the official KHDA approved fees, and do not account for any discretionary discounts that schools may choose to offer against the KHDA approved fees. There are also sometimes further, hidden, mandatory costs – such as uniforms, transport or IT costs – that are not included in the Fact Sheet. These factors may account for any discrepancy between the cited KHDA fees and the fee quoted by the school directly.

It is also important to note that many schools offer bursaries, scholarships, discounts for siblings, welfare assistance in some cases, founders discounts for new schools – and so on. You should always discuss fees with schools as some may be open to negotiation.

A note on the KHDA ratings: The Indian and Pakistani curriculum schools have completed their 2023/2024 inspection round, so their ratings are from 2023/24. The rest of the schools (those following the British, UK, US, IB, etc curricula) are still in the process of being inspected and so the ratings mentioned below are from the most recent available official ratings, which is from the 2022/2023 round of inspections.

Best Value Schools in Dubai by rating

Outstanding Dubai Schools: from least to most expensive

All of the below schools have been rated Outstanding by the KHDA. They are listed in ascending order of fees, but we have separated purely primary schools from the all-through schools (those which also include secondary schools), since lower years tend to be less expensive, which can skew the average fees.

VERY GOOD Schools: from least to most expensive

All of the below schools have been rated Very Good by the KHDA. They are listed in ascending order of fees, but we have separated purely primary schools from the all-through schools (those which also include secondary schools), since lower years tend to be less expensive, which can skew the average fees.

Good Dubai Schools: from least to most expensive

All of the below schools have been rated Good by the KHDA. They are listed in ascending order of fees, but we have separated purely primary schools from the all-through schools (those which also include secondary schools), since lower years tend to be less expensive, which can skew the average fees.

© SchoolsCompared.com. A WhichMedia Group publication. 2024 – 2025. All rights reserved.