Change log · July 2026
What changed in July 2026
327 entries, as they were published. Nothing here is edited after the fact: a change log that can be rewritten proves nothing.
- Working line by line through the audit report rather than triaging it. Assets are now minified - the stylesheet, the site script and the service worker, cutting the JavaScript by roughly a sixth and collapsing the CSS to a single line. We wrote the JavaScript minifier deliberately conservatively, stripping comments and indentation but never collapsing lines, because JavaScript relies on line breaks for automatic semicolon insertion and an aggressive minifier is a good way to break a site silently. Both files were re-parsed after minification to confirm they still compile. And the localised pages have been given the context they were missing. They carried the rating, the fees, the curriculum and the translated inspection findings, but none of the comparison we compute for English readers - so a parent reading in Arabic or Hindi got the facts and not the perspective. Every localised school page now shows where its fees sit against the Dubai median and by what percentage, how many other schools share its district and its curriculum, and the same three questions we tell English readers to ask before enrolling: which of the four statutory inclusion roles are filled and by whom, whether the child’s name would sit on the SEND register rather than simply be known to a teacher, and what is charged above the base fee. Median length across the nine languages rose by roughly forty per cent. The remaining gap is honest rather than fixable by padding: localised pages are summaries pointing to the English original, and we would rather they stayed shorter and accurate than be inflated to satisfy a word-count threshold.
- We told a client that an audit’s low-word-count warning could be dismissed because it was hitting our localised summaries, which are short by design. We had not checked. All thirty flagged pages were English. Testing it properly split the finding in two. The school pages are fine and now we can say so with evidence rather than assertion: the flagged ones run to a median of 934 words against a site median of 980, and not one of the 212 school pages falls below 600 words. Semrush was comparing against school marketing sites, which are longer because they are selling. But the area pages were genuinely thin - 50 of 54 sat under 500 words, with a median of 329 - and that was our fault, not the auditor’s. They now carry real computed detail: where the district’s median fee sits against the city median and by what percentage, the highest-rated schools in the district with the reminder that a strong overall rating is not an inclusion rating, the most affordable listed school with a pointer to what tuition excludes, an explicit note where a district has three schools or fewer that the realistic search area is wider than the district, and the inclusion rights line that a school cannot refuse admission on the basis of special educational needs and must file any refusal with KHDA within two working days. Median area page is now 602 words and none is under 500. Every sentence of it is computed from the register rather than written as description, so it changes when the data changes and it cannot drift into marketing copy. The lesson is the one this project keeps teaching us: we rejected a finding because we had a plausible explanation for it, and a plausible explanation is not a test.
- A third-party audit found 191 errors. Two were real, both were ours, and both are now zero. 162 invalid structured data items: every one of the 212 school pages carried a publisher reference pointing at an Organization node that existed only on the homepage. A dangling reference on every school page. Our own gate checked that the JSON-LD parsed, never that its references resolved - valid JSON, broken schema. The publisher is now defined inline on every page. 28 hreflang conflicts: this one we had explicitly signed off on. We reported 29,557 alternate tags with zero non-reciprocal pairs, and that was true and it was the wrong test. Twenty-seven localised guide pages with no English twin had been made to fall back to the site-wide homepage mesh, and we logged that as correctly excluded. It was not exclusion - those pages were claiming membership of a set they were not in. Our reciprocity check skipped anything resolving to the homepage, so it never looked. We built the check that would pass rather than the check that would find it, which is a worse failure than the bug. Three findings we investigated and are not treating as defects, with reasons. The audit reported 49 pages with no internal links; we tested every page and zero school pages are orphaned - the crawler had followed the www hostname, where our relative internal links keep it on www forever, so every page looks unlinked from there. It reported 2,380 pages with low word count; those are the localised school summaries, which are short by design and point to the English original. And it suggested adding aggregate rating markup to nine pages. We will not. We have no reviews. Publishing a star rating we did not collect would be the precise dishonesty this register exists to argue against, and no amount of click-through rate is worth it.
- The site went live and we reviewed it as a stranger would. Five faults, and we are recording all of them because a launch post that only lists features is marketing. The most serious is ours and it is not visible to a reader: every canonical tag on the site points at a URL ending in .html, while the host serves the same pages without the extension. Both resolve, so nothing looks broken - which is exactly why it is dangerous, because a search engine now sees two addresses for every page and our canonicals, sitemap and 29,557 hreflang tags are split between the two forms. We verified the build artefact before launch and did not verify the deployment, which is the gap. The fix is a single host setting rather than a code change, and it is being applied. Four faults were in the code and are fixed here. Every school page title ended in an orphaned pipe character - our 62-character truncation cut the brand name and left the separator behind, so the first thing a human saw in search results was a dangling bar. Raw HTML was printing as visible text inside the homepage questions, because answers containing intentional links were being escaped along with everything else; the answers are now rendered as markup and the structured-data copies are stripped of tags so the schema stays plain text. Our own denominator contradicted itself on a single page - the header said 212 of about 227 and an answer 800 words below said over 230. After all the work we have done on publishing an honest denominator, that one stung. And the honesty mechanism was over-firing: pages opened with a bold statement that we had not verified which inspection cycle the findings came from, above the findings themselves, which reads to a parent as though we do not know what we are talking about. The caveat is accurate and it stays, but it now sits below the findings as a sourcing note rather than above them as a confession.
- We were asked for an interactive map “like Waze”, and the honest answer has two halves. A true Waze experience means live traffic and turn-by-turn routing, which requires a commercial mapping service, an API key and a billing account, and would load several hundred kilobytes of third-party JavaScript that tracks the visit. This site currently serves an average page in under seventeen kilobytes with one external request, which is the margin by which it beats every competitor on a phone. We were not willing to trade that for a feature the parent can get in one tap from any school page anyway. What we built instead is a genuinely interactive map that costs nothing and tracks nobody: all 212 schools plotted, filterable live by KHDA rating, curriculum and maximum fee, with the count updating as you filter, and a click on any pin opening the school with its rating, district, curriculum and average fee. Schools sharing a district are fanned out on a spiral so none is hidden behind another - zero overlapping pins across the whole register. It renders as plain SVG in 46 kilobytes with a single external reference, and it degrades to a readable page if scripting is off. And it says on the page what it is not: pins are placed by district rather than street address and there is no live routing here, so for the real journey use the Google Maps link on the school page, at drop-off time rather than midday. The right tool for traffic is the one with the traffic data. The right tool for choosing is ours.
- A parent advisory board read this site before launch and held it back over one thing. We had built the best guide in this market for choosing a school, and nothing at all for the moment a parent needs help inside one. There was no page on raising a concern, no page on complaints, nothing on exclusion, three passing mentions of bullying. That is the moment a parent is most frightened and most alone, and we had left them to search at eleven at night and find a school’s own policy PDF. There is now a page for it, and it opens with two facts most Dubai parents do not have. Schools are not permitted to suspend or expel a student without authorisation from KHDA, and KHDA does not support action that would disrupt a child’s learning during the school year - so if your child has been excluded, ask in writing whether that authorisation was obtained and on what date. And safeguarding is not a complaint: most schools’ complaints policies exclude allegations of abuse by design, so a concern about your child’s safety goes to the Designated Safeguarding Lead by name, and if a child is in immediate danger it goes to the police on 999 rather than to the school. The page then sets out the escalation order that actually works - informally but in writing, then formally to the Principal, then the complaints panel, which must include a member independent of the school’s management and which you may attend with one person for support, then KHDA’s Compliance and Resolution Commission. It also says plainly that if you are wondering whether your concern is a real one, it almost certainly is: KHDA recorded 74 complaints in a single month across ten curricula, covering violence between students, safety negligence, expulsions, fee refunds and missing bus routes. The board’s second point was that our freshness warning sat in the footer, 1,400 words below the rating it qualified. The inspection date now sits beside the rating itself, per school, with the age warning where the claim is made rather than where the disclaimer lives.
- An analyst asked where the gap was between what this site is and what it appears to be, and found it underneath everything. Every page footer said school data was last reviewed in July 2026. That was true. The KHDA inspection findings we report are mostly from the 2023-24 cycle. That is also true. Together they misled, because a parent reads a July 2026 review date and reasonably assumes the findings are current. Worse, when we looked at the code, only 55 of our 212 entries carried a verified inspection cycle - and the remaining 157 were silently defaulting to ‘2023-24’, a year we had never confirmed for them. We were asserting a date rather than reporting one. Three things have changed. Entries we can date now show the cycle explicitly, and where it is more than two years old the page says so and warns that leadership, staffing and provision can change substantially in that time - 53 pages now carry that warning. The 145 we cannot date say plainly that we have not verified which cycle these findings come from and will not state a year we have not confirmed. And the footer now gives two dates instead of one blurred one, on every English page and on all 2,427 localised pages in nine languages: reviewed by us in July 2026, findings mostly from 2023-24, because KHDA has not completed a full inspection cycle in two consecutive years - so every rating on this site, and on every other site, is older than it looks. That last sentence is uncomfortable to publish about our own core data. It is also true, it is true of every competitor, and none of them says it.
- We said the hreflang mesh was fixed. It was half fixed, and half a hreflang mesh is worth nothing. Google discards any hreflang annotation that is not reciprocal - if page A names page B, page B must name page A, or the whole set is ignored. Our English school pages correctly named all nine translations. The translations named the language homepages instead of their own English twin. Every one of the Arabic pages pointed at the Arabic homepage, every Hindi page at the Hindi homepage, and so on: 2,421 localised pages carrying an annotation that Google would have thrown away. The nine-language build has been our largest single investment and it was, in search terms, invisible. It now carries a real mesh: every school page, every area page and every localised twin names the same complete set, in both directions. We verified it exhaustively rather than by spot check - 2,687 pages, 29,557 alternate tags, zero unresolvable targets, zero non-reciprocal pairs - and we did the same for area pages, which had quietly fallen back to a homepage-level mesh, and for the localised guide pages, which have no exact English twin and are now correctly excluded rather than pointed at a page that does not exist. The lesson is one we keep relearning here: a count is not a check. Nine tags looked healthy on a school page and nine tags were there. They were the flag links in the language switcher, which Google does not read, and the real annotations were pointing at the wrong pages.
- The last gap on our list was the dull one, and it is the one that decides whether a child starts in September or in January. There is now a page on enrolment documents, and three rules sit at the top of it because they remove obstacles families assume are fixed. First, you can start before your visa is finished. Where a residence visa and Emirates ID are pending, KHDA allows schools up to one academic year to upload them, and schools can begin admission while residency is processing. Second, if a school admits your child with documents outstanding, completing them is the school’s responsibility - KHDA’s guidance says the onus lies with the school, which must undertake it in writing, signed and stamped, and upload it to the KHDA system. If you are admitted on that basis, ask for that undertaking. Third, young children do not need a transfer certificate at all. It is required from Grade 2 or Year 3 upward; below that, placement is by age. Families arriving with a four-year-old routinely chase a document they do not need, and nobody corrects them. The page also separates two things that are constantly confused: moving within Dubai needs a KHDA Leaving Certificate, while arriving from another emirate or overseas into Year 3 and above needs an attested Transfer Certificate. Asking for the wrong one costs weeks. Attestation runs through the origin country’s education ministry, then the UAE embassy, then the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and takes roughly six to eight weeks - so for a September start, begin in June. And the trap that catches everyone: the certificate is issued by the school you are leaving and is normally conditional on fees being cleared, so the document you need in order to go is controlled by the people you are going from. Clear the account before you give notice.
- There was a hole at the exact moment a decision gets made, and we had not noticed it. Everything on this site gets a family to a shortlist - ratings, fees, inclusion, distance, rights. Then you walk through a door, a very good salesperson takes over, and we went silent. There was no page on visiting a school, no page on open days, nothing on what to ask. The questions existed; they were scattered across 212 school pages, which is the one place a parent cannot carry them from. They are now on a single page built to be printed. Twenty-nine questions, drawn from what inspectors and KHDA’s own rules say across this register rather than invented: ask for the KHDA-approved Fees Fact Sheet rather than the marketing sheet, ask which of the four statutory inclusion roles are filled and by whom, ask what level of need your child would be assessed at and what that level costs, ask whether therapists are on site or referred out. And the one that matters most: ask how an individual education plan appears inside a subject teacher’s lesson plan, and ask for an example. We put that question first among the inclusion set because the most common single finding across this entire register is that identification works and classroom delivery does not. The page also says what to look at while nobody is talking - whether specialist rooms are in use or merely tidy, how adults speak to children who are not being shown off, whether students even look at visitors. And it ends on the thing we would tell a friend: watch how your questions are received as closely as how they are answered. A school that takes an awkward question well is telling you something more durable than a good answer, and you will be dealing with these people for years.
- A full technical review across design, engineering, SEO and accessibility found one defect that mattered, and it had been hiding behind something that looked correct. Every school page carried nine hreflang references, so a spot check read as healthy. They were the flag links in the language switcher, and Google does not read hreflang from anchor tags - only from link elements, HTTP headers or sitemaps. The practical effect: 1,908 localised school pages existed, were correct, were in the sitemap, and had nothing formally connecting them to their English originals. An Arabic-speaking parent searching in Arabic had a far smaller chance of being served the Arabic page than we assumed. Every school page now emits a real eleven-tag mesh - English, all nine languages, and x-default - and we verified that all eleven targets resolve rather than trusting the count. The rest of the review came back clean and we are recording it because a review that only reports faults is not a review. Zero images without alt text, a skip link on every page, one h1 per page, a lang attribute everywhere, focus-visible styles, reduced-motion honoured, sixteen right-to-left rules and a print stylesheet. Zero duplicate titles and zero duplicate descriptions across 2,743 pages. Total CSS is 15.9 KB and the average school page is 16.6 KB, with no external font or script requests beyond one. One item we assessed and are deliberately not fixing: a fourteen-pixel font on a message button. It sits below our sixteen-pixel rule, but iOS only auto-zooms on text-entry fields, and this is not one.
- A pre-deployment audit found two faults and the second one matters more than the first. The first: the _redirects file was never being generated at all, despite every canonical tag on this site pointing at the apex domain. Deployed as it stood, the www address could have served duplicate content against our own canonicals from the first day. It now writes three 301 rules covering www and http. The second fault was ours as a process. While fixing the first, we broke the build - and a deployable zip was still produced, because the sealing step never depended on the build succeeding. That is not a one-off. Across this project we have repeatedly had a patch fail silently and a zip seal anyway, and every time it was caught by a check we happened to run rather than by the pipeline refusing. So we have removed the possibility. There is now a single release gate that will not write an artefact unless twenty-four checks pass: the source parses, neither of the two hand-written content dictionaries contains a duplicate key, the build exits clean, every required file exists, every school page carries both sections and no section is an empty heading - which is the failure counts alone miss - no internal link is broken, all JSON-LD parses, every page has a title, description, canonical and viewport, the sitemap closes and every URL in it resolves, and no source file leaks into the zip. We tested it by deliberately breaking the build and by planting a duplicate key. In both cases it refused to seal, wrote nothing, and left the previous good artefact untouched. A check you have to remember to run is not a check.
- An advisor put a plain question to us: the content is the best in this market, so why would anyone ever see it? Three of the four answers need a human - deploy the site, get a school to allow photography, get parents to write reviews. The fourth was ours, and we had not done it. A technical audit of how findable this site is found the fundamentals sound: robots.txt open, sitemap declared, a single canonical host with zero legacy www references, and structured data on 228 pages including full School, PostalAddress and GeoCoordinates markup for every one of the 212 schools. Four pages carry noindex and all four should - the offline page, the 404, the shortlist and the thank-you page. But fourteen real content pages carried no structured data at all, including the four we had just spent days building: fees and refunds, transport, specialist provision, and leaving. Those are exactly the pages built to answer discrete questions a parent types into a search box, and they were invisible as answers. They now carry Article and FAQPage markup with seventeen questions between them, each answer matching the page text word for word rather than being written for the search engine. That distinction matters: schema that says something the page does not say is a lie with better formatting. The remaining fourteen pages without markup are tools and utilities rather than answers, and we have left them alone rather than bolt schema onto pages that do not warrant it.
- KHDA publishes a Registration and Refund Policy that binds every licensed private school in Dubai, and almost no family reads it. We have now put it into plain language, and one rule in it is the single most expensive thing a parent can not know. Absence is not withdrawal. If a child stops attending but stays on the school’s registrar, that is active enrolment and the fees keep running - the policy states outright that absence does not constitute withdrawal or trigger a refund. Refunds run from the date on the Withdrawal Certificate, the date you put in your written request, not from the day your child last walked through the gate. A family that leaves the country mid-year assuming the place lapses can be billed for months after the child has gone. The rest of the page sets out what you actually get back and when: tuition paid before the year starts is refundable with only the registration fee deducted where notice was under 60 calendar days; two weeks or less enrolled costs one month’s fees; two weeks to one month costs two. On distance learning the answer is no and it is worth understanding why - fees stay payable in full even if a child did not join the online sessions, because the refund right attaches to non-delivery rather than to format. And two protections families are almost never told about. Published fees are capped at the approved KHDA Fees Fact Sheet amount, so ask for the Fact Sheet rather than the marketing sheet. And where fees go unpaid, the school must deal with the parent directly and must do so in a way that protects the student’s dignity, wellbeing, safety and access to learning. If a child is being singled out as the pressure point in a fee dispute, that is not simply harsh - it runs against the policy the school is licensed under, and there is a route to KHDA.
- An editorial review went through all 424 written entries looking for the things that make writing sound machine-made, and we have cut them. Four findings. ‘Genuinely’ appeared 42 times - genuinely notable, genuinely strong, genuinely inclusive. It is a hedge doing the job an example should do, and it is now gone entirely. ‘Robust’ appeared 11 times, which is inspector language rather than parent language; it now reads thorough or solid, except in one place where it sits inside a direct DSIB quotation and must not be touched. And the house style had hardened into a tic. The phrase ‘the regulator’s minimum’ was on 23 school pages, ‘who is accountable’ on 12, ‘deliberately thin’ on seven. Each sentence was honest. Read four schools in one sitting and the fourth stops registering, because repetition is how good phrasing turns into wallpaper. Those now rotate through plain alternatives - the floor rather than the standard, the least KHDA accepts, whose name is against it, we are not going to guess. One thing we deliberately did not vary: the questions. Which of the four roles are filled and by whom. Is my child’s name on the register. What is charged beyond tuition. A parent should be able to carry the same three questions into every school and compare the answers, so consistency there is the point rather than laziness. We also checked for the wider tells and found none - no delve, no tapestry, no seamless, no navigate - and confirmed that an apparent 212 instances of one flagged phrase were the footer disclaimer rather than the writing. We checked before reporting it, which is the same discipline the rest of this register runs on.
- This site has been telling families, school by school, that a school is inclusive but is not a specialist SEN institution. That sentence is accurate and it has been incomplete, because we never once said where to go instead. We created a dead end and left parents standing in it. Today that page exists. It leads with the law rather than a list, because the law is the part families are least often told: Federal Law 29 of 2006 guarantees equality and non-discrimination, and Dubai’s Inclusive Education Policy Framework requires that schools do not refuse admission and that they budget specifically for the resources these students need. Mainstream is the default and the entitlement. Specialist provision is a choice, not a relegation. Three things on that page matter most. The Sanad card, issued by Dubai’s Community Development Authority, covers Emiratis and expatriate residents of determination - and in everything published for families, expatriate parents routinely assume these entitlements are for nationals only and never apply. The Ministry of Community Development runs an annual registration window months before the school year, recently 15 April to 28 June, and a family that discovers it in September has lost a year. And joint placement - mainstream and specialist in combination - exists and is easy to miss if you are choosing between the two as though they were exclusive. We also publish what this costs and what families experience, unsoftened: one parent describing roughly AED 5,000 a month for three hours a day excluding transport, applying to more than 45 schools before finding a place, and being told two years later that the school no longer had space. That experience is precisely what the inclusive education framework exists to end, and it is why the rule we have published on every school page for months - that a refusal must be filed with KHDA within two working days - is the most useful sentence on this website.
- The two things a parent asked for and we said were still missing are now published. School transport in Dubai is excluded from tuition at most schools, and the mechanism catches families out far more often than the price does. Three facts do most of the damage and none of them appear in a prospectus. First, transport is typically charged for ten months across three terms, payable before each term starts, and the operator’s published terms state that full payment for each term is due irrespective of the number of working days. That is not how tuition works. A short term, or a term where your child stops using the bus part-way through, is still charged in full - and at some schools that term payment also activates the student ID card, so a late payment reaches beyond the bus. Second, the seat is not guaranteed. Registration is commonly first-come, first-served with an annual re-registration deadline, and routes run to dedicated pick-up points in defined zones rather than door to door - so confirm your address is inside a served zone before you accept a school place, not after. Third, the bus is often not the school’s. A large share of schools outsource to School Transport Services, which at many schools handles registration and payment directly, meaning when something goes wrong the school may not be the party you need. There is no single Dubai bus price because fees are negotiated school by school, and reported 2026-27 adjustments have run from 3-4% at some schools to around 5% at others. We also record the RTA’s shared transport pilot at around AED 1,000 per month for students aged 14 and above in Al Barsha, with a committed journey time under 60 minutes. What we deliberately do not publish is per-school routes and fees: they are negotiated individually, change annually, and we could not verify 212 of them to a standard we would defend. We publish the mechanism and the five questions instead, which is what gets a family a reliable answer in one conversation.
- A parent read this site and found the gap we had talked ourselves out of seeing. Every school page carried a live Google Maps link and the line that real traffic from your own address beats any published estimate. That reasoning is correct. The conclusion we drew from it was not: we used a true statement to justify giving families nothing at all on travel. And the specific thing missing was not a drive time from home - it was this. A family with two children may end up at two different schools, and the distance that decides their mornings is the one between the schools, not from home to each. Nobody in this market answers that, so today we built it. The two-school commute page lets you pick any two of the 212 verified schools and see how far apart they are, with a plain reading of what the number means: under 5 km is a realistic single loop, 5 to 12 km usually means two drops or a bus for one child, over 12 km means assuming two separate journeys. It also lists the eight schools closest to your first choice, so you can see what else sits on the same morning route. The caveat is printed on the page and we mean it: this is a straight-line district-to-district distance, not a drive time. Dubai traffic at 7am does not follow straight lines and our pins are district-level. Use it to rule a pairing in or out before you spend an afternoon on it, then use the live directions link to test the real route at the real hour. Two things a parent asked for are still missing and we are not pretending otherwise: which districts each school’s buses actually serve, and what that transport costs.
- Sheikh Rashid Bin Saeed Islamic Institute is added, and it is the fifteenth of the eighteen schools we named as missing. It is a specialised institute focused on the fundamentals of Shariah and the Arabic language for boys through to Grade 12, rated Good with both Dubai focus areas also Good - a consistent profile rather than a strong headline covering a weak component. Inspectors recorded attainment very good in Islamic education, and students’ personal and social development and their understanding of the culture and history of the UAE rated very good, with Cycle 3 students described as kind and considerate towards younger students. Published against that, the finding a family should ask about directly: the development of research and critical thinking skills was recorded as being at an early stage. And the structural point that matters more than any rating for this school - it is a specialised religious and Arabic-language institute rather than a general-curriculum school, so understand where that pathway leads for university entry before enrolling, and ask what exists for a student who later wants to move to an international track. Three schools remain on the named list: the National Charity School’s girls’ section, International Concept Education, and two settings that are nurseries rather than schools. The register stands at 212 of approximately 227.
- Our own coverage table started reporting an impossible number, and we are publishing the reason rather than capping the display. As the register grew past two hundred schools, the Acceptable row began reading 51 of 48 - 106% covered. There is no such thing as covering more than all of something, so the fault was ours. The per-tier baseline on that table comes from KHDA’s published distribution for a single inspection cycle. It is a photograph, not a live count. Schools move between tiers between cycles, our own per-school ratings are drawn from several sources and cycles, and roughly a dozen schools in this register are too new to have been rated at all - so as coverage improved, our count in one tier simply overtook the snapshot. The table now says exactly that on the row where it happens, with a note explaining why, and it no longer presents that tier as a percentage. We could have quietly capped the figure at 100% and nobody would have noticed. That would have made the table look more precise than it is, which is the specific failure this whole register exists to avoid. Read the tier rows as an indication of where our gaps sit, and the overall figure - 211 of approximately 227 - as the number that means something.
- All six Iranian community schools are now in the register. They were the largest block on our named-missing list and the hardest, and they took longest precisely because so little about them is published in English - which is also why their absence mattered. Iranian Towheed Boys School is the standout and deserves saying plainly: originally established in 1957, one of the oldest private schools in Dubai, and the only school in the emirate running the Iranian National Curriculum and an International Baccalaureate pathway under one roof. Good since 2014-15, its ninth successive Good rating across ten inspections, with Outstanding marks for parent and community partnerships. Our sources disagree on its enrolment and fees and we publish both figures rather than the convenient one. Iranian Salman Farsi Boys School charges roughly AED 2,673 to 4,038 for a full Grade 1 to 12 education - among the very cheapest in Dubai - and runs a specialist unit for students of determination at that price, which is genuinely notable. Published beside it, because both are true: ten consecutive inspections at Acceptable since 2011, and KHDA’s finding that not all new staff consistently sign child protection documentation on joining, which leadership was told to treat as a priority. And at Iranian Khadije Kobra School the most consequential fact is one no rating carries: the school employs around 26 teachers, down from 35 in 2019-20, and no teaching assistants at all. For a child who needs adult support through a lesson, that single line decides more than any inspection grade. The register stands at 211 of approximately 227 - 93%.
- Eight of the eighteen schools we named as missing are now in the register, and the coverage page has been updated to show which. Added in this second pass: the Islamic School for Training and Education in Muhaisnah, established 1982, where Islamic Education and Arabic as a first language are rated Good for attainment and progress across all four cycles and personal responsibility and understanding of Islamic values are Very Good across every phase - published with the constraint that matters most, that external examinations run through the Ministry of Education framework only, with no IGCSE, IB or AP route, which is a decision to understand before Grade 9 rather than after. Pakistan Educational Academy, now Acceptable after KHDA rated it Unsatisfactory in earlier cycles - a substantial recovery, and the direction matters as much as the position. Al Eman Educational EST and Himayah School for Education Girls, both published deliberately thin, with rating and curriculum verified and everything else marked unknown rather than estimated. The register stands at 205 of approximately 227, ninety per cent. What remains is now mostly one block: six Iranian community schools, almost none of which publishes fees, enrolment or an inspection summary in English. We have said from the start that a register which grows slowly and holds up is worth more than one that reaches 227 and does not, and that has not changed because the number is close.
- Four of the eighteen schools we named as missing are now in the register, and each was added only once we could verify it rather than to move a number. Al Arqm Private School in Al Barsha 1: Arabic-medium Ministry of Education curriculum since 1990, among the most affordable in the sector at roughly AED 8,600 to 18,300 - published with the honest reading of its record, that Acceptable held consistently since 2016-17 after an earlier Weak rating points to structural improvement barriers rather than a temporary dip. The National Charity School for Boys in Al Garhoud: entirely Arabic-medium for Grades 5 to 12, at roughly AED 5,900 to 9,100, where mathematics is the one subject rated Good in both Cycle 2 and Cycle 3 and advanced-track sections in Grades 10 to 12 carry no fee premium. Its primary section is published separately and deliberately thin. And DEWA Academy, which is unlike anything else in this register: a vocational academy run by the Dubai Electricity and Water Authority for Emirati boys in Grades 10 to 12, Ministry of Education curriculum alongside BTEC qualifications in electrical, mechanical and mechatronics engineering, Good across three consecutive cycles, with KHDA’s profile listing Grade 11 and 12 tuition as AED 0. Its page also carries a data conflict we did not resolve: KHDA’s own inclusion table lists its curriculum as IB while every other source says MoE and BTEC - consistent with the column misalignment we documented in that table earlier. The register now stands at 201 of approximately 227, 89%.
- The early years page is now the guide the audit said it was not - 1,435 words against 498, and every fact on it verifiable. Four things are new. There are three settings, not two, and they are licensed differently. Nurseries and early childhood centres take children from 45 days, most run to about three, and some - with specific KHDA permission and only where staff and space allow - are licensed to six. Foundation centres are school-run early years settings that bridge nursery and school and feed a specific primary. Schools take children into FS1 from three. Second, the difference almost nobody tells parents: KHDA sets a different minimum teacher qualification for FS1 in an early childhood centre than for FS1 in a school, though where a nursery is licensed for FS2/KG1 and Year 1/KG2 the requirements do match. If your three-year-old could go either way, ask each setting what qualification its FS1 lead actually holds, because the two systems are not standardised and no prospectus distinguishes them. Third, the age rule. From 2026-27 the cut-off moved from 31 August to 31 December at August and September-start schools, while April-start schools - normally Indian, Pakistani and Japanese curricula - keep 31 March. Children already enrolled during 2025-26 are not moved, which means a child already registered at an early childhood centre has their year group assigned under the previous rules. For an autumn birthday that is a year of schooling turning on where a two-year-old happened to be enrolled, and we tell families to confirm it in writing with both settings rather than assume. Fourth, and deliberately: we still do not list individual nurseries, and we will not publish a nursery register we have not checked simply to appear complete.
- An external audit told us something we did not want to hear: we had built the best school register in this market and shipped it with no beginning and no end. It was right. Three things are fixed today. First, the largest factual gap on this site. Dubai nurseries do not have a published KHDA rating. KHDA licenses and regulates more than 200 early childhood centres for ages 45 days to six years, but it does not publish an Outstanding-to-Very-Weak score for any of them. Dubai’s first dedicated early years framework, the ECCE Quality Framework, launched on 14 November 2025 as a self-assessment and development tool, with formal quality assurance signalled for a later phase. Our nursery page did not say any of this. A site whose entire authority rests on teaching parents to read ratings correctly was silent in the one sector where the rating does not exist - leaving readers defenceless against any operator advertising one. The page now leads with that warning and gives the two documents that replace a rating: the current KHDA licence number and the most recent inspection or compliance report. It also carries two absolute rules worth knowing on a tour, that KHDA licenses ground-floor premises only, and that Arabic language exposure is required in every Dubai nursery regardless of curriculum. Second, the journey now has a spine. Only the homepage linked to the nursery page; year groups, costs, curriculum and admissions did not. Every stage page now carries the same eight-stage strip, because a family with two children is never at only one stage. Third, the exit existed nowhere. We had zero pages on transfer certificates as a gating document, attestation, Ministry of Education equivalency, the fork at 16 between A Levels, BTEC and ASDAN, or where students actually go at 18. There is now a page on all of it, and it names the failure mode families hit hardest: assuming the school handles equivalency, and discovering in the final year that it does not.
- Every school in this register now carries its inspection findings in at least one language other than English. All 197 of them - every Outstanding school, every Very Good school, every Good school, every Acceptable school, both schools rated Weak, and every school too new to have been inspected at all. Four hundred and thirty-five translated pages. When this programme began, 1,773 localised school pages carried a notice saying the detailed findings were available in English only, that we were translating them progressively, and that we would not publish a translation we had not checked. That notice is now gone from every one of them. What travelled across is not a brochure. It is the strengths and the qualifications together: the fee that rises 70% by Year 13, the support tier the parent pays for, the campus whose sister school holds the rating, the Arabic-as-a-second-language grade hiding behind an Outstanding headline, the school that is inclusive but is not a specialist SEN institution, the child identified by a teacher but never entered on the SEND register. The two schools rated Weak for inclusion are published verbatim in Hindi and Urdu, unsoftened, because the families they serve have the fewest alternatives and the least access to a forty-page English report. Where sources conflicted we published both figures rather than the convenient one. Where we could not verify, we said so and refused to estimate. The English register remains the authoritative source and every translated page says so. No native speaker has yet reviewed any of these languages, which is stated here as plainly as everything else, and remains the single most valuable hour anyone could give this project.
- One hundred and forty-seven schools now carry translated inspection findings - three quarters of this register, in six languages. Both schools KHDA rates Weak are now translated into the languages their families actually read, and that was the priority. Dubai Arabian American Private School’s pages carry, in Arabic and Hindi, the fact that matters most and is least likely to reach the people it governs: UAE national students are not permitted to enrol in schools rated Weak or below - and at the last inspection more than 395 of roughly 600 students there were Emirati. The families most bound by that rule are the ones least likely to have read it. The same pages carry the collapse in enrolment from over 1,100 students in 2018-19 to under 600 by February 2024, and the more hopeful distinction that its inclusion rating is Acceptable, above its overall judgement. Chinese School Dubai is now published in Chinese, deliberately thin, stating plainly that beyond its Weak inclusion rating we have verified nothing and will estimate nothing. Emirates National Schools carries the most serious inclusion finding in this guide, translated verbatim rather than softened: there is no inclusion leader, and consequently provision lacks strategic direction, monitoring, accountability and leadership support for staff. Welcoming a child at the door is not the same as meeting their needs once inside, and the inspectors said so.
- One hundred and three schools translated, including both schools rated Weak for inclusion whose communities read Hindi and Urdu. Woodlem Park School holds the lowest inclusion judgement in this register, and we have translated the inspectors’ wording rather than softening it: leaders do not have a cohesive vision for inclusion, systems of accountability and support are insufficient, assessment data are not used effectively to monitor classroom practice and adapt the curriculum, there is insufficient investment in recruiting experienced staff, and the school provides limited support for students of determination and for those who are gifted. Its fees are among the lowest in Dubai and its KG phase draws warm parent feedback for phonics-focused early literacy - both of which are also published, in the same languages, on the same page. Buds Public School carries the same rating and one observation that is itself the finding: the school publishes no detail about facilities or support for additional learning needs, despite being required under KHDA policy to have them in place. Translating a Weak rating into the language of the families it affects is the least comfortable work in this programme and the most clearly necessary.
- One hundred and one schools translated, and today’s two carry the hardest findings in this register into the languages of the communities they concern. H.H. Sheikh Rashid Pakistani School charges roughly AED 3,100 to 6,260 and serves a community with very few alternatives. KHDA rates its inclusion Weak, and one inspection finding explains what that means in practice - now published in Urdu and Arabic: the school identifies students with SEND using a range of assessments including outside specialists, but not all students identified appear on the SEND register. A child can be known to their teacher and still be invisible to the system that allocates resources, plans and monitoring. Identification and registration are two separate acts, and only the second one triggers support. The page ends with the question that follows: is my child’s name on the register, not merely known to the teacher? The Philippine School’s pages carry its Weak inclusion rating alongside the finding that matters most for a teenager: curriculum pathways for students of determination are limited, particularly regarding future qualifications and post-school options. That is a question to ask in Grade 7, not Grade 12.
- Ninety-nine schools translated, both of today’s among the cheapest in this register. The Central School Dubai has run CBSE in Al Nahda since 1981 and charges roughly AED 4,200 to 7,400 a year; Crescent English School has been in Al Qusais since 1984 and charges from about AED 3,600. These are the schools where a wrong choice is least recoverable, because a family paying these fees usually cannot absorb a mid-year move, and they are also the schools with the least English-language guidance available anywhere else. Both pages carry their genuine strengths - Central’s kindergarten curriculum is notably progressive, built on inquiry and a scaffolded-talk technique for oral language; Crescent has climbed to Acceptable after years rated Weak, with real strengths in early years and pastoral care. And both carry limits stated plainly in Hindi and Urdu: Central’s Arabic as an additional language reaches Weak at secondary level, and inspectors found its leadership still developing evaluative rigour - which we translate as the school’s view of itself not yet being reliable enough to drive improvement. Crescent’s summary is blunter still: Acceptable is the regulator’s minimum, and this school has meaningful ground to cover before it can be called a strong academic performer.
- Ninety-seven schools translated - the halfway point of this register. Every school rated Outstanding, every school rated Very Good, a third of the Good tier, and now the first of the Acceptable schools carry their inspection findings in at least one language other than English. The school that crosses the line is The Elite English School in Deira, and it is a fitting one. It charges roughly AED 4,500 to 10,200 a year, serves over 2,000 students, was rated Good exactly once - at its first inspection in 2010-11 - and has been Acceptable in every inspection since. Its pages now carry in Hindi and Urdu the two numbers that belong together: 116 students on the SEN register with identification accurate but support uneven, and a teacher-to-student ratio of about 1:23. Those facts explain each other. A thin adult-to-child ratio makes consistent in-class support materially harder to deliver, however committed the staff, and naming the connection is more useful to a parent than either number alone. Ninety-seven schools down, one hundred to go.
- Ninety-six schools translated, and one of them is a boys’ school of roughly 4,700 students charging between AED 8,700 and 14,600 a year. Our Own High School Al Warqa’a now carries in Hindi and Urdu what DSIB inspectors wrote about it: the Inclusion Department is a success story, with an open-door policy with the counsellor and accommodations provided in line with the Dubai Inclusive Education Policy Framework and UAE law. And then, in the same report, three precise things that still need to change - extend provision so the inclusion team is fully represented within senior leadership; ensure there are sufficient learning support assistants to maximise the progress of all students of determination; and ensure class teachers are fully informed about exceptional learning needs and develop the expertise to provide consistently high-quality modification and support. We published those three in English because they are a checklist a parent can put to the school item by item. They are worth more in Hindi and Urdu, because the families at this school are overwhelmingly South Asian, most will never read a forty-page inspection report in English, and a checklist you can read is a checklist you can use.
- Ninety-five schools translated. Added today: Amity School Dubai, GEMS Al Barsha National School and Nibras International. The Amity pages carry three facts in Arabic and Hindi that together make it one of the more genuinely open schools in this register: 78 students of determination, no additional fee for internal learning support, an explicit statement that the school will not refuse admission on the basis of SEND, and sibling priority for families with a child who has additional needs. The GEMS Al Barsha National pages carry the opposite kind of information, and it matters most to the community that school serves. It has been Acceptable at every inspection, we found no published inclusion rating for it and say so rather than infer one - and, critically, Emirati families are encouraged to move from Acceptable-rated schools to those rated Good or better. For a school serving a large Emirati community, that regulatory fact is the most consequential thing on the page, and it now appears in Arabic. Nibras International carries the distinction we drew in English months ago: inspectors named support for students of determination as an area for improvement, while also recording that students themselves are particularly kind toward classmates with additional needs. Culture and provision are not the same thing, and here the culture is ahead of the systems.
- Ninety-two schools translated. Added today: both Al Mawakeb campuses and Collegiate International. The Al Mawakeb pages publish an admissions position that every family with a child who needs support should read before paying for anything, and it now exists in Arabic and Hindi: the Principal and Senior Leadership Team admit a student when they determine that adequate provision can be made, and expect an assessment from an external agent such as an educational psychologist or occupational therapist. That is a capacity-based admission with an external-report expectation. It is materially different from the schools in this register that admit without requiring a diagnosis - and the pages say so directly, telling families to know which kind of door they are knocking on before they pay for an assessment. To the group’s genuine credit, and also published, it links KHDA’s own ‘Advocating for Inclusive Education’ parent guide: a school pointing families toward their rights, including their rights against the school. The Al Khawaneej page adds that it is the newest of the three campuses, opened 2018, so inclusion staffing there should be asked about rather than assumed from the older schools.
- Eighty-nine schools translated. Added today: SMM High School Muhaisnah, Dubai International Private School Al Quoz, Cambridge International School and American School of Creative Science Nad Al Sheba. The SMM pages carry a distinction that only matters if you read past the headline, and it is published in Arabic and Urdu because it concerns Arabic itself: the school is Outstanding in English, mathematics and science with excellent IGCSE results, and strong in Arabic as a first language - while Arabic as a second language is Weak. Those are two different subjects taught to two different groups of children under one name. A family whose child will study Arabic as an additional language is looking at the second figure, not the first, and nothing in an overall rating of Good would tell them so. ASCS Nad Al Sheba is added with its inclusion rated Very Good, above the school’s overall judgement, alongside the honest limits: Arabic attainment lags the strongest core subjects, mathematics consistency is uneven across phases, and there are no published senior external results yet to benchmark against.
- Eighty-five schools translated. Added today: The Indian High School Garhoud, Dubai Gem Private School and Star International Al Qusais. The Star International pages carry an admissions mechanism that families should understand in full, and it now exists in Arabic and Hindi. Identification runs either through the school’s own specialist team or a formal medical diagnosis - meaning a diagnosis is not the only route in. Thousands of parents in this city are on assessment waiting lists believing they cannot apply until they hold paperwork. At this school they can. The same pages explain that every admission involving a student of determination is handled by the inclusion team under the Inclusion Champion, and that the school may issue a ‘Conditional Acceptance’ with conditions and a timeline counter-signed by all present - the pages tell families plainly that this is the document to obtain and read carefully. The Indian High School Garhoud carries the campus warning in Hindi and Urdu: this is the KG to Grade 4 site, Grades 5 to 12 are at Oud Metha under a different rating, and applying to the wrong one is a common and costly error.
- The Good tier begins, and it begins with the schools serving the largest Emirati and Arabic-speaking communities in this register. Al Ittihad Al Safa is rated Very Good for both inclusion and wellbeing, above its overall judgement, with inspectors naming the school’s inclusive ethos and the high quality of care for all students including students of determination - in a school where roughly 90% of 2,850 students are from Emirati families. Al Ittihad Al Mamzar carries the finding that recurs more often than any other in this guide, now stated in Arabic and Hindi: inspectors asked that the modifications written into individual education plans actually appear in classroom lesson plans, and actually be delivered in lessons, having found that in-class support was not always reliable. Its published policy adheres explicitly to the social model of disability, which is a real philosophical commitment rather than a slogan. Dubai National School Al Barsha publishes a compliance statement covering the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities - and is published here with two findings that sit against it: progress for students of determination is variable and dependent on teaching quality, and plans to install elevators improving access for students with mobility needs had not been implemented at the time of inspection. A school can commit to a UN convention on paper and still not have the lift.
- The Very Good tier is complete in translation. All forty-six schools this register rates Very Good now carry their inspection findings in at least one language other than English, alongside all twenty-two Outstanding schools - seventy-nine schools and two hundred and four pages in total. Added in this final Very Good batch: GEMS Wellington Academy Silicon Oasis, GEMS World Academy, Jumeira Baccalaureate School, Sunmarke School and Bilingual French International. The last of those is published in French and Arabic with a decade of rating history stated precisely - Acceptable, Good, Good, back to Acceptable, Good, Good, then Very Good - because a school that climbed, fell and climbed again is a different proposition from one that has always been where it is, and the pattern is invisible in a single current rating. Its pages also carry an honest gap: we found no separately published inclusion rating for it, and we say so rather than inferring one from the overall judgement, giving families the three questions to ask instead. Next: the Good tier, seventy-four schools, which is the largest single block in this register and the one where most Dubai families actually choose.
- Seventy-four schools translated. Added today: Jebel Ali School, Swiss International Scientific School, Dubai International Academy Al Barsha and Royal Grammar School Guildford Dubai. Two of these carry a caution about inherited reputation, which is the last form of the same warning this register has now issued in three languages across every school group where it applies. DIA Al Barsha’s pages state that the Emirates Hills campus’s rating does not belong to this school. RGS Guildford’s state that the English parent school’s reputation does not transfer automatically - this is an independent school with its own rating. Neither statement is a criticism of either school. Both are Very Good. They exist because a name arriving from England or from a better-rated campus across town is the single most persuasive thing a family hears, and the least evidential. Swiss International Scientific School is published in French as well as Arabic, being genuinely bilingual, with a point that only matters if you are choosing it for a child who needs support: a bilingual education adds a language load, so ask specifically how learning support interacts with the dual-language track.
- Seventy schools translated. Added today: North London Collegiate, Brighton College Dubai, Emirates International School Jumeirah and GEMS FirstPoint. The FirstPoint pages describe a structure worth copying and now readable in Arabic and Hindi: three specialist teachers, seventeen learning support assistants, and fifteen Inclusion Champions - one in every year team and one in every subject department. That means inclusion has an owner in each part of the school rather than sitting in one office at the end of a corridor, which is a genuinely different operating model and one no rating captures. Published against it, in bold: specialist provision, if required, is chargeable, with the amount set by level of need and advised only at that point. As the pages say, a charge whose size you learn after accepting a place is a charge worth asking about before. EIS Jumeirah carries the same shape of warning - Wave 3 students needing a one-to-one learning support assistant are funded by families - alongside genuinely detailed provision including examination access arrangements and individual plans reviewed formally at least three times a year with parents present. North London Collegiate and Brighton College are published with the qualification this register attaches to every selective school, in every language: admission is selective, and that partly explains the results.
- Sixty-six schools translated. Added today: Kings School Nad Al Sheba and International School of Creative Science Nad Al Sheba. The Kings Nad Al Sheba pages carry a warning this register issues wherever a school group holds different ratings at different campuses, and it belongs in translation because group branding is precisely what travels furthest by word of mouth: the Outstanding inclusion ratings held by Kings Al Barsha and Kings Dubai do not belong to this campus. Each campus is inspected separately and carries its own judgement, and this one is Very Good. That is a good rating. It is not the one a family may have been told about. We have now published this same caution, in three languages, for the Kings campuses, the Dubai British Schools, the Victory Heights campuses and the two JSS schools - four cases where a strong name attaches to schools of genuinely differing performance, and where a parent choosing on reputation alone would be choosing on the wrong evidence.
- Sixty-four schools translated. Added today: Repton Al Barsha, GEMS Founders Al Mizhar and GEMS Al Khaleej International. The Al Khaleej pages carry the most granular tier breakdown published anywhere in this register, and translating it was the point: around 110 students with SEN requirements, of whom six receive Level 3 support, forty-seven Level 2 and nine Level 1. A parent whose child would sit at Level 3 can now see, in Arabic or Hindi, that the school currently supports six children at that intensity - and can ask what capacity looks like. No rating conveys that. The same pages carry the fact that reframes everything else on them: around 85% of students are English language learners, because Arabic or another language is their first. A school where nearly everyone is learning in a second language is running a different kind of inclusion operation, and a family should read it that way. Repton Al Barsha is published with both its strength and its pressure - 140 students at 11% of the roll making better than expected progress, and a school growing from a few hundred pupils toward more than 1,300. GEMS Founders Al Mizhar carries the same growth warning: from 3,000 students to over 4,000 in under two years, on a 1:17 ratio.
- Sixty-one schools translated. Added today: GEMS Metropole Al Waha, GEMS Legacy School and The Arbor School. The Legacy pages carry, in Arabic and Hindi, the pattern this register has now documented at more schools than any other single finding: assessment and planning handled well by the SEN team, delivery by individual subject teachers inconsistent. Inspectors recorded robust identification procedures and very effective personalised support for the highest level of need - and, in the same report, that support by class teachers is variable and provision for gifted students underdeveloped. The translated pages end with the single question that tests it: ask how an individual education plan appears inside a subject teacher’s lesson plan. Arbor’s pages name its twenty-strong Thrive team in full, including an Accomplished Learner Lead for gifted students, alongside the cost that a rating never shows - enhanced SEND provision is charged separately under its own contract. And Metropole Al Waha carries a small but real advantage: its February 2026 inspection is the most recent in this entire register, so its rating is fresher than almost every other school here.
- Fifty-eight schools translated, and this batch reaches the schools with no KHDA rating at all. Dubai British School Jumeira and DBS Mira are both too new to have been inspected, and their translated pages say so plainly rather than borrowing a group reputation. What they carry instead is the evidence that actually exists. At Jumeira, the head of inclusion moved from Arcadia British School, where he is widely credited with the Outstanding inclusion ratings that school holds from both KHDA and British Schools Overseas - for a school with no inspection record of its own, that is a far more meaningful signal than the group brand, and the pages say why. At Mira, the school describes its own inclusion as an area of active development rather than a finished model. That is unusually candid, and the translated pages use it exactly as intended: it is the reason to ask what exists today rather than what is planned. Raffles International completes the batch with a fact worth translating carefully - its assessment processes in Secondary and Post-16 are rated Outstanding, the highest possible grade, and data is the machinery inclusion actually runs on.
- Fifty-five schools translated. Added today: GEMS Winchester School Dubai and Raffles World Academy. The Winchester pages carry two admissions facts in bold that matter more to families reading in Hindi, Urdu and Arabic than to almost anyone else: admission does not require a medical diagnosis, and siblings of students with SEND are given priority. Diagnostic assessment in Dubai is expensive, slow, and disproportionately available in English - so a family whose first language is not English is exactly the family most likely to be waiting for a report, and most likely to assume, wrongly, that they cannot apply without one. Winchester is also non-selective with documented value-added progress. Raffles World Academy’s pages carry a structural option this register has documented at very few schools and which is worth knowing exists at all: joint placement with a specialist provider for children whose needs exceed what a mainstream school can deliver alone. For a family currently choosing between mainstream and specialist provision as though they were exclusive, that is a third answer.
- Fifty-three schools translated. Added today: Universal American School, Hartland International and Dubai Heights Academy. The Dubai Heights pages are the most detailed physical description of any school in this translation programme, and deliberately so - for a family whose child has sensory needs, facilities are not decoration, they are the provision. Those pages now name in Arabic and Hindi the Wonder World room with its fibre-optic light therapy, the Fun Junction sensory room with a magnetic climbing wall, a sensory sound garden, therapy support classrooms, and a speech and language therapist and occupational therapist on site twice weekly delivering group therapy inside classrooms. The school was founded under Dubai’s own ‘My community… a city for everyone’ initiative, and that context is published too. Set against all of it, in bold: where a child needs a full-time one-to-one assistant, the school helps the family interview and hire the candidate, but the parent pays. Hartland International carries the counterpart fact - 84 students of determination supported by fifteen qualified inclusion teachers, with no additional fee for internal learning support. Two schools, two models, both legitimate, both now legible to families who could not previously read either.
- Fifty schools translated - a quarter of this register now carries its inspection findings in at least one language other than English. Added today: The English College Dubai, Ranches Primary, Horizon International and Regent International. The Regent pages carry a sentence that belongs in every language this site publishes, because it is the single most useful thing a school can tell a family and almost none do: the school states plainly that it is an inclusive school, not a specialist SEN institution. If your child needs an intensive therapeutic programme, that distinction decides everything, and discovering it in October rather than March is the difference between a considered choice and a crisis. The same pages carry both halves of what inspectors found - that the inclusion department’s support was named among the school’s strengths, and that inspectors simultaneously asked for inclusive provision to be strengthened further. We published that pair in English months ago after correcting ourselves for having printed only the credit; it now appears in Arabic and Hindi as a pair too, because publishing half a finding is misleading even when every word of it is accurate.
- Forty-six schools translated. Added today: Lycée Français Jean Mermoz in French and Arabic, GEMS Royal Dubai School, and Emirates International School Meadows in Arabic, Hindi and French. The Meadows pages now carry, in three languages, the strongest single inspector statement in this entire register - quoted in full rather than summarised: in this very inclusive school, all students, including students of determination and those who are gifted and talented, almost always have their needs fully met, and the skillful inclusion team manage a varied range of needs with sensitivity and expertise. Inspectorates do not write like that often, and when they do it should reach the families who cannot read the report. Jean Mermoz’s French pages describe a structure worth copying: its inclusion lead sits inside a Pôle d’Inclusion comprising two psychologists or counsellors, the principal, heads of phase and a governor - leadership, clinical expertise and governance in the same room - published alongside the precise gap inspectors found, that middle leaders and teachers do not yet use assessment data well enough for differentiated planning. GEMS Royal Dubai is primary-only, and its pages lead with the warning that has now appeared on every primary-only school we have translated: plan the secondary move from the day you enrol.
- Forty-three schools translated, and French joins the translation programme where it actually belongs. Having worked up from the cheapest Very Good schools, we have reached the premium end of that tier - and the language that matters most changes with it. Lycée Libanais Francophone Privé is a francophone school, so its findings now appear in French alongside Arabic and Hindi rather than in languages its families are less likely to read. That page carries something worth naming: partenariat avec les familles noté Exceptionnel, the school’s highest single rating, alongside three published development points - make personalised plans carry measurable outcomes, align diagnoses fully with KHDA categories of need, and strengthen provision for gifted students. It also carries two concerns raised by families rather than inspectors: Arabic needs consolidating at Lycée level, and the effect of the Taaleem acquisition is being watched closely. Uptown International School is added in French, Arabic and Hindi as one of the very few schools rated Outstanding for both provision and outcomes for students of determination - published, as always at this fee level, with the instruction to get the cost of full-time one-to-one support in writing, because a top rating does not tell you that number.
- Forty-one schools translated, one hundred and twenty-three pages. Added today: Arcadia School, Springdales School Dubai and Apple International School. Arcadia holds Outstanding for inclusion from both KHDA and British Schools Overseas, and its translated pages carry the tiered cost model in bold: intermittent support is included in the fee, a full-time one-to-one learning support assistant is funded by the parent. This is now the second school in three builds where the strongest inclusion record in its bracket sits alongside a cost that only appears if you ask. Both facts are true and both are published, in three languages, on the same page. Apple International School is the counterweight the register keeps finding: 164 students of determination, a graduated intervention system and an ASDAN pathway, at an FS1 fee of roughly AED 6,832. Structured inclusion at that price is genuinely rare, and it is the strongest argument against assuming that support scales with fees. Springdales School carries 115 students of determination through a dedicated SAWA department with ASDAN available - published with the honest limit inspectors named, that provision for gifted students is variable.
- Thirty-eight schools translated, one hundred and fourteen pages. Added today: GEMS Wellington Academy Al Khail, Safa British School and Greenfield International School. The Al Khail pages carry the single most financially consequential sentence this register publishes about any school, now in three languages and in bold: Level 1 and Level 2 support are included in the fee; Level 3 is funded by the parent. A tiered fee model is not wrong - several excellent schools use one - but a family needs to know before applying which level their child will be assessed at and what that level costs, because the answer can be the difference between an affordable education and an impossible one. That question is now readable by the families least likely to have been told it verbally. Safa British School holds Outstanding for inclusion from both KHDA and British Schools Overseas - two independent inspection systems reaching the same conclusion, which is a stronger signal than either alone - with the Bridge Learning Centre as named, physical provision rather than a policy line. Greenfield International supports between 117 and 176 students of determination at a ratio near 1:13.
- Thirty-five schools translated, one hundred and five pages. Added today: JSS International School and German International School Dubai. Both halves of the JSS name collision are now published in three languages, and each page points at the other: JSS International runs CICSE, JSS Private runs CBSE, they are separate schools with separate ratings, and a family should confirm which one they are applying to before paying anything. Publishing the warning on only one of the two pages would have been half a fix. German International School Dubai carries three facts that a prospectus would not put together on the same page, and that translation now does. Its inclusion is rated Very Good, above the school’s overall judgement - the more relevant number for a family whose child needs support. Its special educational curriculum comes at an additional cost agreed with parents, so the amount belongs in writing before applying. And its wellbeing is rated only Good, with inspectors finding that leaders ‘have not yet facilitated a shared vision for the wellbeing of all’. Strong inclusion provision and unsettled wellbeing can coexist in one school, and a family reading in Arabic, Hindi or Urdu can now see both.
- Thirty-three schools now carry translated inspection findings - ninety-nine pages across Arabic, Hindi and Urdu. Added today: JSS Private School, Credence High School and GEMS Founders School Dubai. JSS Private School’s pages carry a warning this register issues wherever school names collide, and it belongs in translation more than in English because it is exactly the kind of error a family makes when navigating an unfamiliar system in a second language: JSS International is a different school with a different curriculum - CICSE, not CBSE. Two schools, two ratings, one very easy and very expensive mistake. What is genuinely strong at JSS Private is also now readable in three languages: 155 students of determination among roughly 2,100, five guidance counsellors for the whole school, Very Good held across three consecutive inspection cycles, and a reading literacy benchmark that rose 49 points to 582 in 2023 - progress KHDA itself rated Outstanding. Credence High School and GEMS Founders Dubai complete the batch, both published with the same instruction: confirm in writing what full-time one-to-one support costs, because a Very Good rating tells you nothing about that number.
- Eight Very Good schools now translated into Arabic, Hindi and Urdu - twenty-eight schools and eighty-four pages in total. Added today: The Millennium School, GEMS New Millennium School and Ambassador School. The Millennium School’s translated pages carry two warnings rather than one, and both are phase-specific in a way that changes who should worry about them. Support is inconsistently delivered - identification works, implementation does not reach every classroom - and teaching quality in Primary and Middle sits below KG and Secondary. A family entering at Foundation Stage should weigh that differently from one entering at Year 7, and the pages say so. Ambassador School carries a number that is unusual at its fee level: 162 students of determination on a ratio near 1:9, with a GESS Award for inclusion and a sustained climb from Acceptable through Good to Very Good. GEMS New Millennium School charges no additional fee for internal learning support - the fifth school in this register documented doing so, and the translated pages tell families to confirm it in writing rather than take it on trust.
- Five Very Good schools now translated into Arabic, Hindi and Urdu, continuing from the bottom of the fee range upward. Added today: GEMS Our Own English High School, Delhi Private School and The Winchester School. GEMS Our Own English High School runs the largest inclusion operation in this register - roughly 13% of students have an additional learning requirement, which in a school of about 10,000 means well over a thousand children. Its translated pages carry the caveat in bold, because at that scale it is the whole question: the implementation of the modified curriculum for all students of determination is variable. Delhi Private School formally identifies at both ends - 228 students of determination and 272 gifted students - and offers ASDAN for students the mainstream academic route does not suit, at an average fee near AED 13,500. The Winchester School’s pages carry the two facts that matter most to a family still waiting on an assessment, now in three languages: admission does not require a medical diagnosis, and siblings of students with SEND get priority. Winchester is also non-selective with documented value-added progress, which makes it the fourth school in this register to demonstrate that open admission and strong outcomes are not a trade-off.
- Translation moves to the Very Good tier, and we are starting at the bottom of the fee range rather than the top. The two schools added today - The Indian High School and GEMS Our Own Indian School - charge roughly AED 5,525 to 10,465 and AED 6,500 to 13,300 respectively, and both are Indian-curriculum schools serving communities where Hindi and Urdu are first languages. That is the point. A family paying AED 90,000 a year usually has an agent, a relocation package and a colleague who has done this before. A family paying AED 8,000 has a WhatsApp group and whatever they can read. The translation is worth more to the second family, so they go first. What those pages now carry in three languages: The Indian High School has eleven guidance counsellors at that fee level, and - the structural fact families miss - this is the Grades 5 to 12 campus, with KG to Grade 4 taught at Garhoud under a different rating. GEMS Our Own Indian School supports 349 children of determination, about 9% of its roll, and builds peer support into its culture: Grade 11 students stay back in the afternoon to coach middle school pupils. Both pages also carry the April-to-March academic year warning, which is a genuine logistical problem for a family moving from a September-start system and almost never appears in a prospectus.
- The Outstanding tier is complete in three languages. Twenty-two schools - every school this register rates Outstanding - now carry their inspection findings in Arabic, Hindi and Urdu, sixty-six translated pages, all verified. Added in this final batch: Nord Anglia International School Dubai, Dubai English Speaking College and Lycée Français International Pompidou. Dubai English Speaking College closes the tier with the argument this whole register exists to make, now readable in three more languages: 208 students of determination, non-selective admission, no additional fee for internal support, 60% of GCSE grades at 7 to 9, and documented value-added of 1.14 - students progressing further than their starting points predict. Alongside JESS Arabian Ranches and GEMS Wellington International, that is three independent proofs that open admission and top results are not alternatives. Nord Anglia’s pages carry the counterweight in the same breath: its results are excellent and its admission is selective, and those two facts belong together. The Pompidou pages carry the practical warning a francophone-curriculum school needs for any family arriving from an English system - that instruction is in French, and a language transition plan is something to ask about specifically rather than assume. Next: the Very Good tier, where most families in this market actually choose.
- Nineteen schools now carry their inspection findings in Arabic, Hindi and Urdu - fifty-seven translated pages, all verified. Added today: GEMS Jumeira Primary, Horizon English School and Victory Heights Primary. All three are primary-only, and their translated pages all lead the improvement list with the same warning: this school ends at Year 6, so the secondary move needs planning from the day you enrol. That is not a criticism of any of them. It is the single most common expensive surprise in Dubai schooling, and it lands hardest on families new to the emirate who assume, reasonably, that a school takes a child through to eighteen. A parent who reads that sentence in their own language at the point of choosing has two or three years to plan a transfer instead of two or three months. Victory Heights Primary’s pages also carry the distinction we drew when its sister campus opened: the ELLI framework and inclusion philosophy were transplanted wholesale to City of Arabia, but the Outstanding rating belongs to this school, not that one - and that sentence now exists in three languages on both pages.
- Sixteen schools now carry their inspection findings in Arabic, Hindi and Urdu - forty-eight translated pages, all verified. Added today: Kings School Dubai, Dubai British School Emirates Hills and Jumeirah College. Two details in this batch are worth naming because they translate a structural fact rather than a description. Kings School Dubai has a sensory room and an occupational therapist on site - the translated pages say plainly that the service exists on campus rather than being referred out, because for a family managing external therapy appointments around a school day, that distinction is the whole difference. Dubai British School Emirates Hills offers ASDAN alongside its mainstream academic support, which means a student who cannot access a full academic programme has an accredited route through the school rather than a holding position. Jumeirah College is Outstanding for both overall and inclusion, and its translated pages carry the qualification this register attaches to every selective school: admission is selective, that structural fact partly explains the results, and it should be read alongside them rather than after them.
- Thirteen schools now carry their inspection findings in Arabic, Hindi and Urdu - thirty-nine translated pages, all verified. Added today: JESS Jumeirah, Repton School Dubai and Dubai International Academy Emirates Hills. The last two were chosen deliberately, because they carry the same distinction and it is the single most important thing this register has to say. Both are rated Outstanding overall and Very Good for inclusion - one level lower. Those are two different judgements measuring two different things, and a family whose child needs support is served by the second, not the first. That sentence now exists in Arabic, Hindi and Urdu on both schools’ pages, in bold, above the strengths. It matters more in translation than in English, because a parent who cannot read the inspection report is exactly the parent most likely to be handed the word ‘Outstanding’ and nothing else. The translated pages carry the specifics too: that Repton’s inspectors found teachers still improving delivery with ‘consistency remains a challenge’, and that DIA was asked to engage the parents of all identified students rather than most. JESS Jumeirah’s pages carry its published admissions position - that students are not refused admission based only on their experience of SEND - and the fact that its learning support carries no additional fee.
- Ten schools now carry their inspection findings in Arabic, Hindi and Urdu - thirty translated pages, all verified. Added today: GEMS Dubai American Academy, Dubai British School Jumeirah Park and Safa Community School. Two of these carry facts that matter more in translation than in English. GEMS Dubai American Academy’s cohort of students of determination grew from 124 in 2013-14 to 220 in 2018-19 to 334 in 2022-23 - nearly trebled - while its inclusion rating rose from Very Good to Outstanding at the same time. Most schools’ identified numbers rise because reporting improves; here the judgement rose with them. The translated pages also carry the admissions position in full: no medical diagnosis required, sibling priority for families with SEND, and no refusal on disability alone - which for a parent still waiting on an assessment is the single most actionable fact on the page, and until today they could only read it in English. Safa Community School’s pages now carry something almost no school in this market tracks: the identification of ‘Arabic C’ students, those holding Arabic passports who do not speak Arabic. That is a real and widely ignored need in this city, and it now appears in Arabic. The same pages record that the school involves students of determination in designing their own education plans, and that inspectors quote those students directly.
- Seven schools now carry their inspection findings in Arabic, Hindi and Urdu - twenty-one translated pages, all verified rendering. Added today: GEMS Wellington International, Kings School Al Barsha, Dubai English Speaking School, JESS Arabian Ranches, Deira International and GEMS Modern Academy, alongside Dubai College. We are translating the Outstanding tier first, for a specific reason. These are the schools a family is most likely to be told about second-hand, in a WhatsApp group or from a colleague, and therefore the ones where an unqualified reputation travels furthest ahead of the evidence. What travels with the reputation is the strengths. What does not travel is the qualification, and that is what we are making sure arrives in the reader’s own language. So the Arabic, Hindi and Urdu pages carry the caveats intact: that GEMS Modern Academy does not enrol every identified student in its support programme, which the report attributes to parental reluctance; that JESS Arabian Ranches has closed waiting lists in most year groups; that Dubai English Speaking School is primary-only, so the secondary move needs planning from the day you enrol; that Kings Al Barsha and Wellington International sit at the top of the fee market and one-to-one support may be charged on top. Three of these seven are also the schools that prove the register’s central point in three languages now rather than one: JESS Arabian Ranches, GEMS Wellington International and Dubai English Speaking School are all non-selective and all produce top-tier outcomes. High results and genuine inclusion are not alternatives to each other, and that sentence should not only be readable in English.
- We have begun keeping the promise printed on every localised school page. Since the language programme launched, all 1,773 localised school pages have carried the same notice: the detailed inspection findings for that school are available only in English, we are translating them progressively, and we do not publish a translation we have not checked. Today the machinery to keep that promise exists and the first school is done. Dubai College’s inspection findings now appear in full in Arabic, Hindi and Urdu - the strengths and the qualifications both, including the point that matters most about that school, that its admission is selective by competitive examination and that this structural fact partly explains its results and should be read alongside them. The system is built so that partial coverage is safe: any school without a checked translation continues to show the honest notice rather than a machine-generated approximation, and each translated page carries a line stating that the English register is the authoritative source. That is deliberate. A translated summary that quietly diverges from the English original would be worse than no translation at all, because a family reading in Arabic or Urdu has no way to know it has drifted. One school of 197, in three of nine languages, is a small start and we are not going to describe it as more than that. But the difference between a promise and a mechanism is the mechanism, and it now exists.
- The coverage page now names every school still missing, rather than reporting a percentage and leaving families to guess what sits behind it. When an external audit challenged this register nine days ago it held 169 schools and had never once published its own denominator. It now holds 197 of approximately 227. The Weak tier has gone from 0 of 2 to 2 of 2 - the two schools a parent most needs warning about, and the ones we were most conspicuously missing. Acceptable coverage has risen from 56% to 85%, Good from 73% to 90%. Roughly eighteen inspected schools remain and they are now listed by name, because a named absence is more useful than a number. They are not a random remainder: six are Iranian community schools, seven are Islamic and charitable foundation schools including the three National Charity School sections, and the rest are a handful of others including DEWA Academy and two settings that are nurseries rather than schools. They share a characteristic, and it is the honest reason they are last. Almost none publishes a fee schedule, an enrolment figure or an inspection summary in English through channels available to us, and several serve specific national or faith communities whose information circulates within those communities rather than on comparison sites. For most we can verify a name and an inclusion rating and very little else. We could publish eighteen pages tomorrow carrying a name, a rating and nothing a parent could use. That would show 100% coverage and would be the same failure this audit exposed, wearing the opposite mask. We would rather report our real figure accurately, name what is missing, and add each school when there is something real to say about it.
- Next Generation School in Al Barsha added, with a piece of context that changes how its rating should be read. The school was rated Acceptable at its February 2024 inspection - and that inspection took place two months after the Founding Principal died, led from the school side by the then Vice Principal. Achieving the regulator’s minimum in those circumstances reads differently from achieving it in normal ones, and almost nobody reports it. Our sources also disagree on the current rating: the February 2024 inspection recorded Acceptable while more recent reporting describes the school as Good, and we publish both rather than choose, pointing families to the KHDA directory for the live figure. What is not in dispute is the model. This is a genuinely integrated American-Islamic school - New York learning standards for literacy and mathematics, Next Generation Science Standards for science, and Arabic and Islamic Studies treated as central subjects rather than compliance subjects - with inspectors identifying real strengths in Kindergarten and Islamic education, and parents describing a Life Skills programme covering entrepreneurship and financial education alongside robotics and swimming. Published with the structural facts a family should weigh: classes are segregated by gender from Grade 4, the school was at around 60% of capacity at inspection, and Grade 12 opened only in August 2025, so there is no senior examination record yet. The register stands at 197 of approximately 227.
- Two more schools, and a fee curve worth publishing in full. Queen International School in Al Quoz is an affordable UK-curriculum option where tuition rises gently through the early years - about AED 17,200 in FS1 and still only AED 17,500 by Years 5 to 7 - and then steepens sharply exactly when families are least able to move: AED 19,400 in Year 9, AED 23,300 in Years 10 and 11, AED 25,300 in Year 12 and AED 29,200 in Year 13, roughly 70% above the FS1 rate. Books, utilities and laboratory charges add AED 1,600 to AED 4,500 depending on year group, with transport, uniforms and examination fees separate. A parent budgeting from the headline FS1 figure would be badly wrong by Year 13, and the page says so. Its entry also flags a discrepancy we cannot resolve: KHDA’s own inclusion table lists the school as IB while every other source describes a UK curriculum preparing students for London Board examinations. Al Rashid Al Saleh Private School in Oud Metha: Good for both overall and inclusion on a Ministry of Education curriculum, at roughly AED 8,500 to 18,300 with an average near AED 12,900 - a Good inclusion rating at that price is among the strongest value-for-rating propositions in this register. The register stands at 196 of approximately 227.
- Two more schools, and one of them has made a climb almost no other school in this register can match. Philadelphia Private School in Muhaisnah was rated Acceptable every year from 2011 to 2023 - thirteen consecutive years at the regulator’s minimum - and moved to Good in 2024. Its page credits that plainly and then asks the only questions that matter about a recent breakthrough: what specifically changed, who drove it, and are those people still in post. Its inclusion entry carries the finding that complicates the good news: inclusion is rated Acceptable, below the school’s Good overall - so the improvement that lifted the school has not yet reached its provision for children who need adaptation to the same degree. English Language Private School in Oud Metha: opened April 1978, one of the very first schools established in Dubai, close to 1,969 students, and among the most competitively priced British all-through schools in the emirate with a KHDA-regulated average around AED 7,465. Published with the cost detail that advertised fees conceal: a one-time admission fee, annual charges for extracurricular activities, medical cover, skill development resources and a school magazine levied on all students, an extra enrichment fee in Years 12 and 13, and transport at AED 1,400 to 1,700 per term. Sources also disagree on its fee range and the page says so. The register stands at 194 of approximately 227.
- Three more schools, and one of them is a reminder that a single word can understate a school as easily as flatter it. Bright Learners Private School in Al Rashidiya is rated Acceptable - but inspectors recorded 19 individual judgements at Good and three at Very Good, meaning over a quarter of all evaluation criteria already sit at Good or above. A genuinely American-staffed US-curriculum school that opened at the height of the pandemic with 59 students and had passed 240 by early 2024. Published against that, the finding that deserves most weight: the school’s self-evaluation judgements were not accurately aligned with the KHDA framework - in plain terms its view of itself was not reliable, which undermines any improvement plan built on it. Crescent English School in Al Qusais: established 1984, over 1,550 students, and now Acceptable after years of Weak ratings - among the most affordable schools in this entire register at roughly AED 3,600 rising to AED 10,800. United International Private School in Muhaisnah: the first Philippine school established in Dubai, founded 1992, 1,823 students, with personal development and social responsibility rated Outstanding across all phases - and Acceptable overall since 2019-20 following a downgrade from three consecutive Good ratings. Its inclusion entry names the precise gap inspectors found: curriculum adaptation for students of determination rated only Acceptable against a curriculum rated Good, meaning the teaching plan is stronger than the adaptation of it for children who need it changed. The register stands at 192 of approximately 227.
- Al Diyafah High School’s entry deepened with figures that change how it reads. Its rating history is now published precisely: Acceptable for three years, then Good for the eight years since - a real climb that then plateaued, which is a different story from a school that has simply always been Good. Its outcomes are stronger than the fee level suggests, with 61% of IGCSE entries graded A* to A and a 100% A Level pass rate, and inspectors recording attainment very good in Secondary. Two things are published against that. Curriculum breadth is the genuine constraint: subject choice is weighted heavily to Science and Commerce, and Art and Design is the only creative arts subject offered - so for a child whose life is in music, drama or the visual arts, that is the limitation to weigh rather than the price. And its inclusion entry now carries 21 students registered under SEN requirements in a school of 1,714, with this register’s standing caution attached: a small identified cohort can mean genuinely low need, or needs that are not being found. The register remains at 189 of approximately 227.
- A school added specifically because it is closing. Renaissance School in Dubai Sports City will shut at the end of the 2025-26 academic year following a fall in student numbers, and its building will be taken over by Queen Elizabeth’s School Dubai - which already appears in this register as a 2026 opening. We have published the page rather than omitting the school, because families currently enrolled need somewhere accurate to read about what happens next, and because a register that only lists schools you might join is less useful than one that also tells you what is ending. The page says plainly that this is not a school to apply to. What it records is genuine: a Kindergarten rated Good across most subjects for teaching, curriculum design and progress, a US curriculum on New York State standards, two swimming pools, and parents describing a school where teachers know every child. And the honest reasons it did not survive: Acceptable across three consecutive inspection cycles, Elementary and Middle broadly Acceptable, and Arabic as an Additional Language rated Weak in Elementary for both attainment and progress. Its inclusion entry carries around 23 students of determination and the question that now matters most for those families - not what this school provides, but which school takes that provision on, and whether the plans transfer with the child. The register stands at 189 of approximately 227.
- Three more schools, found using the corrected matching method rather than the substring approach that produced false positives yesterday. The City School International in Nad Al Hamar: Good since 2017-18 after years at Acceptable, with attainment rated Very Good in English, mathematics and science at both Primary and Secondary and above-average PIRLS reading performance - unusually strong academic foundations at this fee level, on a full FS1 to Year 13 pathway including A Levels and BTEC. Its inclusion entry carries the precise caveat inspectors gave: identification has improved and parents are more involved, but the quality of individual education plans varies and provision is not consistently monitored across phases. Grammar School in Al Garhoud: serving Dubai since 1970, among the oldest schools in this register, at roughly AED 5,100 to 7,000 - one of the most accessible UK-curriculum options anywhere in the emirate. Published with the central limitation stated plainly: Teaching for Effective Learning is rated Acceptable across all four phases, and one guidance counsellor with six teaching assistants serves 1,321 students. Sabari Indian School in Deira: published deliberately thin, with a note that some parent-facing directories describe it as Good while KHDA’s own table records Acceptable - where sources disagree we take the regulator’s. The register stands at 188 of approximately 227.
- A correction about our own method, and it is worth recording because it is the second time this week the process has caught us rather than a reader. Researching what we believed were two missing schools - Global Indian International School and Pearl Wisdom School - we discovered both were already in this register. Our gap analysis had matched school names by substring against a regulator list and produced false positives, and we very nearly published duplicate pages on the strength of it. The build’s duplicate-key check stopped that before it went live, and both entries have been merged, keeping the fuller research. The episode surfaced something more useful than the error. Our existing entry for Global Indian International School records the campus in Academic City, founded 2010, at roughly AED 13,000 to 26,000. The sources we consulted while re-researching it place the campus on Meydan Road, give a later founding date, and quote roughly AED 16,500 to 34,800. We cannot presently establish which is right, so the school’s page now carries both figures and says plainly that we do not know, rather than quietly keeping the number we happened to have first. What we did keep from the new research is the substance: inspectors describing the curriculum as ‘well designed and imaginative’, 35 students of determination at first inspection, and a 100% Grade 10 pass rate published without divisions or student numbers and therefore not interpretable. The register remains at 185 of approximately 227 - not 187, as we briefly believed.
- Two more Indian-curriculum schools, both Good. Global Indian International School on Meydan Road: Good at its first KHDA inspection in October 2023, with 997 students, and a curriculum inspectors described as ‘well designed and imaginative’ - a deliberate hybrid running EYFS in Kindergarten, the National Curriculum of England through Primary and Middle, UAE priorities, and then preparation for CBSE board examinations. Its inclusion entry carries 35 students of determination and inspectors’ finding that secure systems identify them with plans modified to individual targets - published with this register’s standing caution that a small identified cohort can mean genuinely low need or needs that are not being found. Two honest notes sit on that page: the school reported a 100% pass rate for its first Grade 10 cohort in 2022 but did not publish divisions or student numbers, so the headline cannot be interpreted; and some published fee figures are net of a scholarship, with students beyond the first 500 historically paying more. Pearl Wisdom School in Al Qusais: Good for both overall and inclusion, affordable CBSE at roughly AED 16,100 to 23,300 - and published with the plain statement that we hold less verified detail on it than on most schools here, and have not estimated what we could not confirm. The register stands at 187 of approximately 227, with Good coverage at 89%.
- Three more schools, and one of them carries a sentence worth quoting in full. The Westminster School in Al Qusais is the largest private English-curriculum school in the UAE by enrolment, with 5,241 students - and DSIB opened its January 2025 report by saying the school ‘provides an all-round education of the highest quality in a truly inclusive environment’. That is unusually direct language from an inspectorate, and it is doing real work at a school where FS1 tuition starts under AED 8,000 and laboratory, medical, library, activities and computer fees are already included rather than added later. Inclusion at that scale and that price is genuinely uncommon in this market. Published beside it are the inspectors’ two asks: widen curriculum pathways in the upper phases for a broader range of abilities, and ensure all learning spaces have sufficient resources - a plain resourcing point, and one to see for yourself on a visit. The Sheffield Private School in Al Nahda 2: Good, around 1,188 students, described as reflecting genuine improvement since opening in 2004, published without a fee range because we could not verify one. And Deira Private School, published deliberately thin: we have its Acceptable rating for both overall and inclusion and little else we can stand behind. Its page also flags a discrepancy rather than resolving it - KHDA’s own table lists the curriculum as IB while other sources describe it as British, and we have not established which is right. The register stands at 185 of approximately 227.
- Two of Dubai’s oldest private schools added, both drawn from KHDA’s official inclusion table and both verified separately for fees and curriculum before publication. Al Diyafah High School in Al Nahda: founded 1982, still under family ownership with the founder’s daughter now running it, Good across more than a decade of inspections with personal development rated Outstanding, at roughly AED 11,600 to 24,700 for a full FS1 to Year 13 British pathway. The detail that matters most sits in its inclusion entry: the school runs ASDAN alongside A Level and BTEC Level 3, so a student who cannot access a full academic programme has an accredited route through rather than a holding position. Dubai Scholars Private School in Al Qusais: established 1976, among the very oldest private schools in the emirate, around 2,100 students, Good for both overall and inclusion, consistently Good across every inspection cycle we can trace to 2010-11 - and published without a fee range, because we could not verify one and will not estimate it. The register stands at 182 of approximately 227, with Good coverage now at 84%. We are adding these two and three at a time rather than in bulk because each is checked against a second source before it goes live. A register that grows slowly and holds up is worth more than one that reaches 227 and does not.
- We went to the regulator’s primary source and it corrected us three times. KHDA publishes an official Inclusion Rating Table listing every inspected school and its inclusion judgement. We had been assembling inclusion data school by school from secondary reporting; reading the source document directly exposed three errors on live pages, and all three are now fixed. Dubai Arabian American Private School: we published that no separate inclusion figure could be found. KHDA records it as Acceptable - above that school’s Weak overall judgement, which is a materially different picture for a family whose child needs support. Ghaf Private School: we published that no inclusion rating could be found, and framed its 1:4.5 teacher-to-student ratio as a likely advantage for a child needing adult attention. KHDA records it as Weak, below the school’s Acceptable overall. That was wrong on both counts. The ratio is real, but a favourable ratio is not the same thing as staffed, trained inclusion provision, and we should not have implied it was. The Philippine School: we published an unresolved conflict between a Weak figure and a review source saying Acceptable, and promised to resolve it rather than pick the convenient answer. The regulator’s own document says Weak, and it is the lower of the two. One school has also been added: Chinese School Dubai, the only Chinese-curriculum school in this register, Weak for inclusion, published with an explicitly thin entry because beyond that rating we could not verify its overall judgement, fees or findings - and a thin honest entry serves a family better than absence. Two further notes for anyone checking our work. That same table identifies 34 more schools missing from this register, which we are now working through. And the machine-readable extraction of it has visibly misaligned curriculum columns - it lists the Japanese School as UK and Dubai Arabian American as IB, both demonstrably wrong - so we are using it for names and inclusion ratings only, and verifying curriculum and fees separately. A primary source is not the same as a clean source.
- Two more schools from KHDA’s own published inclusion table, both of which we had missed. Capital School Dubai in Al Qusais: Good overall but Very Good for inclusion, with a Foundation Stage rated Very Good by inspectors across every performance indicator, BSO and BSME accreditation giving external validation independent of the regulator, and the full FS1 to Year 13 pathway through IGCSE, A Level and BTEC at mid-range fees. Al Shurooq Private School in Jumeirah: Good, founded in 1986 and among the older private schools in the emirate, running an Arabic-medium Ministry of Education curriculum with a dedicated SEN inclusion section - a named physical part of the school rather than a policy line. For both, where we could not verify a figure we have said so rather than estimated: no fee range is published here for Al Shurooq, and families are pointed to the KHDA fees fact sheet instead. The register stands at 179 of approximately 227, and Good coverage has risen from 73% when this audit began to 81%. A note on method for anyone checking our work: these two were found by diffing our register against the school names printed in KHDA’s published inclusion rating table, which is a slower way of closing the gap than guessing, and the only one that produces entries we can defend.
- Three more schools added, and two corrections found while adding them. The Elite English School in Deira: CBSE, over 2,000 students, among the most affordable in this register at roughly AED 4,500 to 10,200 - rated Good once, at its first inspection in 2010-11, and Acceptable in every inspection since, on a teacher-to-student ratio of about 1:23 that is high even for a lower-fee Indian school. Its inclusion entry carries 116 students on the SEN roll with identification accurate but support uneven, and the page draws the link the ratio makes unavoidable. Al Salam Private School in Al Nahda: we had it banked as an Acceptable school and it is not - KHDA has rated it Good consistently since 2013-14, and it is now in the register at the correct tier. It holds one of the highest proportions of students of determination of any school in Dubai, roughly 19% of its roll, on affordable British-curriculum fees - published alongside a counsellor ratio of about 1:1,253 and the fact that IGCSE began only in 2024-25, so no senior examination results exist yet. Collegiate International School: Good, including Good for inclusive education, on a 1:11 ratio, with mathematics and science Acceptable above Elementary. And a correction to a page published yesterday: Dubai Carmel School’s inclusion rating is Good in KHDA’s own published table, above its Acceptable overall. We had published the caveats without the rating. Both now appear, with the rating first, because for a family whose child needs support that is the more relevant of the two numbers. The register stands at 177 of approximately 227.
- Three more Acceptable-rated schools added, continuing the reverse-rating order we committed to. Ghaf Private School in Jebel Ali Village: Acceptable in 2023-24, up from Weak the year before, with a Foundation Stage rated Good across teaching, assessment, curriculum design, personal development and health and safety - and published beside the fact that its Primary phase lags, that it runs only to Year 8, and that 54 students against a capacity of 350 is a commercial reality as well as an educational one, and a fair question to put to leaders. Dubai Carmel School in Al Nahda: a full British pathway to A Level at roughly AED 8,900 to 15,100, with inspectors crediting very good understanding of Islamic values and Emirati culture and remarkable social and enterprise skills - published with the honest ceiling, Acceptable held across more than a decade, and the finding that 76 students of determination are supported by systems whose identification works but whose in-class delivery does not reach every classroom. The Central School Dubai: CBSE since 1981, over 3,500 students at roughly AED 4,200 to 7,400 a year, with teaching Good at secondary - and Arabic as an additional language reaching Weak at secondary level, science Acceptable throughout, and leadership described by inspectors as still developing its evaluative rigour. The register now stands at 174 of approximately 227, with Acceptable coverage up from 56% to 63%. Eighteen Acceptable schools and nineteen Good schools remain.
- The two schools this register was most conspicuously missing are now in it. Dubai Arabian American Private School and The Fifth Dimension Elementary School are the only two schools in Dubai that KHDA rates Weak, and until today neither appeared here - on a site whose stated purpose is to warn families rather than flatter schools. That was the single worst consequence of the coverage gap we published yesterday, and it is fixed first for that reason. Dubai Arabian American: Weak in February 2024, down from Acceptable, with inspectors citing curriculum implementation, teaching quality in English, mathematics and science, leadership stability and limited literacy resources - published alongside what parents and inspectors both credit, a safe building, a nurturing Kindergarten, improved Arabic attainment and strong grounding in Emirati values, at affordable fees. Two facts on that page carry real weight. Emirati students are not permitted to enrol in schools rated Weak or below, and at the last inspection more than 395 of roughly 600 students there were Emirati - so the families most affected by this rating are the ones least free to ignore it, and the page tells them to speak to KHDA directly. And enrolment has fallen from over 1,100 students in 2018-19 to under 600 by February 2024. The Fifth Dimension Elementary School: Weak on its first inspection. Its public record is among the sparsest of any school in this register, and we have published the entry thin rather than not at all, stating plainly that we could not establish a fee range and will not estimate one. The register now stands at 171 of approximately 227 schools, and the Weak tier reads 2 of 2 rather than 0 of 2. Next: the 21 missing Acceptable schools, then the 19 missing Good.
- Correction, and the largest this guide has published. An external challenge put it plainly: this register lists 169 schools, while Dubai has approximately 227. We audited the claim and it is upheld. The regulator’s own published figure, in May 2026, was 227 private schools serving 387,441 students. This register therefore covers 74% of the market, and 58 schools are missing. In our defence, we never claimed to cover every school and have run a coverage page since launch stating that we do not - but we never once published the denominator. The number 227 appeared nowhere on this site, so a reader had no way to know they were seeing three-quarters of the market. That silence was the real fault, and it is now fixed: the total appears in the page title, the description, the social card and at the top of the coverage page, and the navigation label ‘All schools’ has been changed to ‘School register’ because it overstated scope. The more serious finding is one the challenge did not raise and we had not measured. The gap is not evenly spread. This register is 96% complete among Outstanding schools, 96% among Very Good, 77% among Good, 56% among Acceptable - and it contains none of the two schools the regulator rates Weak. Coverage collapses as ratings fall. That is survivorship bias: it makes Dubai’s school market look better here than it is, it fails hardest the families who can least afford a wrong choice, since affordable schools cluster in the Acceptable band, and it sits badly with a guide that publishes four Weak inclusion ratings and names a school with no inclusion leader. The per-tier coverage figures, including the nought-out-of-two Weak line, are now published on the coverage page and computed at build time so they cannot drift. We are closing the gap in reverse rating order - the two Weak-rated schools first, then the 21 missing Acceptable, then the 19 missing Good - and this register will not be described as complete until it matches the regulator’s list.
- Farsi completes the language programme. Nine languages now stand at full structural parity - English plus Arabic, Hindi, Russian, French, Spanish, German, Chinese, Urdu and Farsi - with 227 pages each and a total of 2,308 pages, against 271 eleven days ago. Farsi is the third right-to-left language and serves a substantial Iranian community in Dubai; like Arabic and Urdu it inherits the right-to-left rules built earlier, and its link now sits in the language switcher on every page alongside the rest. Each language carries the same architecture: the complete register of all 169 schools filterable by area, curriculum and rating, a page for every school, a page for all 54 districts, and three guides covering what a KHDA rating means, what fees include and exclude, and the rights of children with additional needs - the non-admission form, the four mandatory inclusion roles, the 60 per cent obligation on support teachers, and the rule that standard provision must sit inside standard tuition. Two things remain true and are printed rather than buried: the per-school inspection findings are still in English across all nine languages and are being translated progressively, and no native speaker has yet reviewed any of the nine. The first of those is work we will do. The second needs nine readers, and it is now the single most valuable hour anyone could give this project.
- Urdu has been added as an eighth language at full structural parity, with its link now sitting alongside the others in the language switcher on every page. It is the second right-to-left language after Arabic, and the reason for adding it is specific rather than decorative: Dubai has one of the largest Pakistani communities of any city outside Pakistan, this register includes a Pakistani-curriculum school, and that school currently holds a Weak inclusion rating from KHDA with the finding that not every identified student appears on its SEND register. The families most affected by that finding are precisely the ones least likely to have been reading it in English. Urdu now carries the full register of all 169 schools filterable by area, curriculum and rating, a page for every school and all 54 districts, and guides on ratings, fees and the rights of children with special needs - including the non-admission form, the four mandatory inclusion roles, and the rule that standard provision must sit inside standard tuition. The site now stands at 2,081 pages across eight languages. The standing caveat is unchanged: per-school inspection findings remain in English, and no native speaker has yet reviewed any language.
- All seven languages are now at full structural parity. Chinese completes the set: the register of all 169 schools filterable by region, curriculum and rating, a page for every school and all 54 districts, and guides on ratings, fees and the rights of students with special educational needs. The site now stands at 1,854 pages against 271 ten days ago - English plus Arabic, Hindi, Russian, French, Spanish, German and Chinese, each carrying 227 pages. Two decisions are worth recording. Dubai district names are left in Latin script in Chinese as in the European languages, because residents use them for maps, taxis and KHDA records and a transliteration would break both search and wayfinding. And a note for anyone comparing the word counts in our coverage table: Chinese does not use spaces between words, so its count is not comparable with the others and is not a measure of less content. The standing caveat is unchanged and now covers 1,589 localised pages: the detailed inspection findings and the inclusion section on each school page remain in English, are being translated progressively, and are never published unchecked. No native speaker has yet reviewed any of the seven languages, and we would rather print that than let a reader assume otherwise.
- German now has full structural parity - six languages at 227 pages each, and a site of 1,628 pages against 271 a week ago. German-speaking families now have the complete register of all 169 Schulen filterable by Stadtteil, Lehrplan and Bewertung, a page for every school and all 54 Stadtteile, and guides on Bewertungen, Schulgeld and the rights of children with Förderbedarf. Only Chinese remains a landing page. The word Förderbedarf was chosen deliberately over a literal rendering of ‘students of determination’, because it is the term a German-speaking parent would actually search for and would recognise from their own school system - the same reasoning that kept Dubai district names untranslated in French, Spanish and German alike. And the standing caveat holds, now across 1,362 localised pages: the detailed inspection findings and the inclusion section on each school page remain in English, translated progressively, never published unchecked - and no native speaker has yet reviewed any of the six languages.
- Spanish now has full structural parity, making five languages at 227 pages each and a site of 1,402 pages. Spanish-speaking families in Dubai now have the complete register of all 169 colegios filterable by zona, programa and calificación, a page for every school and every one of the 54 zonas, and guides on calificaciones, cuotas escolares and the derechos of alumnos con necesidades especiales. As with French, Dubai district names are left exactly as residents use them rather than translated, because a translated proper noun helps nobody find a school or direct a taxi; only genuine descriptors were rendered, such as calle Hessa. Two languages remain as landing pages, German and Chinese. And one thing has now been true for five languages running and is worth stating rather than burying: 1,135 localised pages exist that no native speaker has yet read. The translations are careful and the terminology is checked against the regulator’s own vocabulary, but careful is not the same as reviewed, and this guide has always preferred to name the gap rather than let a reader assume it is not there.
- French now has full structural parity, joining Arabic, Hindi and Russian - four languages carrying 227 pages each, and a site that has grown from 271 pages to 1,176 in a week. French matters here for a specific reason: five schools in this register are francophone, including three lycées following the French national curriculum under AEFE accreditation, and until today a French-speaking family had one landing page. They now have the full register of all 169 schools filterable by quartier, programme and notation, a page for every school and every district, and guides on notations, frais de scolarité and the rights of élèves à besoins particuliers. One deliberate translation decision is worth recording: Dubai district names are left as francophone residents actually use them - Al Barsha, Jumeirah, Mirdif - rather than being translated, because translating a proper noun would break both search and wayfinding. Only genuine descriptors were rendered in French, such as rue Hessa. The same limit stands as for the other three languages and is printed on every localised school page: the detailed inspection findings and the inclusion section remain in English for now, translated progressively, never published unchecked.
- Russian now has full structural parity, joining Arabic and Hindi. That is three languages carrying 227 pages each: the complete register of all 169 schools filterable by district, curriculum and rating; a page for every school; a page for all 54 districts; and written guides on what a KHDA rating means, what fees include and exclude, and the rights of students with additional needs. All six rating levels, all six curriculum names and all 54 district names are rendered properly in each language. The site is now 949 pages against 271 a week ago. Adding Russian took one build rather than the several Arabic took, because the localisation system built for Arabic and Hindi was designed to make a new language a data addition rather than new code - the sitemap, the guide registry and the page loop now all follow a single list of full-parity languages, so nothing had to be duplicated. French, Spanish, German and Chinese remain landing pages for now. The same honest limit applies to Russian as to the other two, and is printed on every localised school page: the detailed inspector findings and the inclusion section for that school are still in English. We translate those progressively and do not publish a translation we have not checked.
- Arabic and Hindi now have full structural parity with the English register. Each language carries 227 pages: the complete register of all 169 schools filterable by area, curriculum and rating; a page for every one of those 169 schools; a page for all 54 districts; and three written guides on what a KHDA rating means, what fees include and exclude, and the rights of students of determination. Navigation is entirely in-language - the register links to the localised school page, which links to the district, which links back - with a clear route out to the full English record on every page. All six rating levels, all six curriculum names and all 54 district names use proper terminology in each language, and ‘أصحاب الهمم’ is used throughout the Arabic as the UAE’s own term. We chose these two languages deliberately rather than translating all eight. Arabic serves Emirati families, for whom the enrolment rules on this site have direct legal weight; Hindi serves the Indian-curriculum sector, the largest single segment of Dubai’s private schools by school count. Machine-translating 1.5 million words into six more languages without native review would have risked the accuracy of the English register and breached search engines’ own guidance on scaled unreviewed translation, so we did not do it, and we would rather say that plainly than quietly ship it. One limit is printed on every localised school page: the detailed inspector findings and inclusion section for that school are currently in English only. We are translating those progressively, and we do not publish a translation we have not checked.
- The Arabic section is now a real guide rather than a welcome mat. Until today ‘/ar’ was a single 131-word page that said, in effect, that the full guide was in English. It now carries the complete register of all 169 schools - filterable by area, curriculum and rating, with every school name linking through to its full page - alongside three written guides: what a KHDA rating actually means, what school fees include and exclude, and the rights of students of determination. That last page is the one that matters most, and it publishes in Arabic what this register spent eighty-six tranches establishing in English: that a school may not refuse a child on the grounds of disability under Federal Law 29 of 2006; that a school declining a student of determination must file a ‘non-admission’ form with KHDA within two working days, so a refusal is a recorded event rather than a private conversation; that the standard school service for students of determination must sit inside standard tuition, with enhanced provision chargeable only under a KHDA-registered individual service agreement at no more than actual cost; and that the mandatory inclusion support team has four defined roles, including a support teacher expected to spend no less than 60% of their time improving other teachers’ inclusive practice. Area names, curriculum names and all six rating levels use the official Arabic terminology, and ‘أصحاب الهمم’ is used throughout as the UAE’s own term. Right-to-left layout has been corrected across tables, lists, breadcrumbs, callouts and the masthead. One honest caveat is printed in the footer of every Arabic page: these texts are translated from the English register, and we invite native-speaker corrections and will publish them like any other.
- The inclusion sweep is complete. All 169 schools in this register now carry an inclusion entry - covering cohort sizes, named team structures, ratios, therapy access, fee tiers, admissions mechanisms, identification routes, qualification pathways, stated boundaries, and, where no evidence exists, an explicit statement that we do not know rather than a plausible guess. The final school, St Mary’s Muhaisnah, has a dedicated SENDCO and Inclusion Team identifying needs early with parental and external-specialist input, delivering personalised in-class support, focus groups and one-to-one interventions under individual education plans, with leaders and governors demonstrating strong commitment. Its published caveats are exact: although individual students and their needs are communicated to teachers, the support and challenge they receive in class is inconsistent and not always well planned; inspectors asked for a wider range of diagnostic assessments and evidence-based targeted support; and the head of inclusion does not have many links with other inclusion departments to help prioritise the school’s vision - a professional-isolation problem rarely named this openly. Added alongside it, the four statutory inclusion roles every Dubai school must staff, defined: inclusion champion, leader of provision, support teacher, and learning support assistant - including the requirement that a support teacher spend no less than 60% of their time making other teachers better at inclusion. When a school says it has an inclusion team, a family can now ask which of the four roles are filled, by whom.
- Inclusion sweep, eighty-fifth tranche. Lycée Français International Mudon: no KHDA rating and no published inclusion data for this campus, and we say so plainly rather than borrowing its Outstanding-rated sister school’s record. Support for students of determination and English-language learners is expected to follow KHDA standards, which is a requirement rather than a distinction, and we frame it that way. Two things are genuinely useful: the primary offer is deliberately more international than the network norm, with up to six hours of English weekly for all students or three hours of English plus three hours of French support for those who need it, which is a structured route for a child arriving without strong French - and the school opened in temporary accommodation for 2025-26, moving to its purpose-built campus ahead of 2026-27, so ask exactly when and what your child’s first year looks like. New Dawn Private School: no rating, no published inclusion data, but a leadership structure that includes a named functional lead for Inclusion alongside Arabic and Islamic Studies, Curriculum and Assessment, and Pastoral Care, with an inclusive admissions policy. For a school this new that is a structure rather than a track record, and it is labelled as such - with the question that matters most for a small growing team: what happens when a need exceeds what it can deliver.
- Inclusion sweep, eighty-fourth tranche. DESS Primary Academic City has no KHDA rating yet, but carries the best-documented inclusion provision of any new school in this register, because the school has published it: a nine-strong Inclusion team working from a dedicated Learning Zone - an Inclusion Champion, two Inclusion teachers, a Student Advisor and five learning support assistants - with approximately 48 students at 6% of the roll receiving SEN support by January 2026, 65 students at 8% designated with Gifts and Talents, and 16 receiving English language support. Its support model is explicit and we publish the consequence: staff determine provision for Wave 1 needs, while for Wave 2 or 3 needs the school works with parents to arrange a customised plan - so establish in writing what customised covers, and who pays. One genuine structural advantage: children are guaranteed places at DESS College at the end of Year 6, which removes the secondary-transfer problem most primary-only schools leave families to solve. The Scholars School: no rating, opening August 2026, but recruiting a Special Educational Needs Coordinator and Inclusion Support Teacher reporting to a Head of Inclusion - a proper three-tier structure being hired before the doors open. Intent, not outcome, and labelled as such.
- Inclusion sweep, eighty-third tranche - the 2026 premium entrants, written with no regulator judgement to lean on and no pretending otherwise. Harrow International School Dubai has appointed Jason Todd as Director of Inclusion, currently Director of Inclusion at Yasmina British Academy Abu Dhabi and Group Lead of Inclusion at Aldar Education with responsibility for compliance and strategic direction across twelve schools, and fifteen years in SEND. Appointing a group-level inclusion lead before opening is a meaningful commitment rather than a brochure line, and the school states it will be non-selective with a deliberately broad intake - both recorded as intent, neither tested with children in the building. Rugby School Dubai: the campus design includes dedicated spaces for inclusion and learning support alongside medical clinics, so provision is planned into the building rather than retrofitted, and the inherited Kent College site explains why this school may open across the full FS1 to Year 13 range rather than the usual cap. Queen Elizabeth’s School Dubai: its UK parent is a state grammar rated Outstanding by Ofsted, which is to say its results come from academically selective entry in a different system - so the question we put on that page from the first day stands unchanged: how selective will this campus be, and what happens to a child who finds the pace difficult.
- Inclusion sweep, eighty-second tranche, and a correction that resolves something we previously left open. On the inspection pause, we had recorded that sources conflicted about when full inspections resume. The position is now clear: KHDA has announced that private schools will not undergo full inspections during 2025-26 - the second consecutive year without them - with the exception of new schools completing their third year of operation, and with quality assurance visits focused on specific improvement areas taking their place. Our key-findings page now says exactly that, and draws the consequence plainly: for most schools in this register the rating you are reading is the most recent one that exists, and it may be two or more years old. That is precisely why this guide publishes the findings underneath a rating rather than the rating alone. Also encoded: the three Dubai Schools campuses. Al Barsha, with 161 students identified with additional learning needs at its first inspection. Nad Al Sheba, rated Good for provision and outcomes for students of determination, above its overall rating. Al Khawaneej, where we found the school’s own inclusion commitment but no separately published rating, and say so. All three carry the same context: the Dubai Schools partnership exists to help Dubai reach 100% of Emirati students in Good-or-better schools, and two of the three campuses have not yet cleared that bar themselves.
- Inclusion sweep, eighty-first tranche, and a finding that names a specific failure mode. H.H. Sheikh Rashid Pakistani School: KHDA’s published inclusion rating table records this school as Weak, and an inspection finding explains what that means in practice - the school is inclusive and has begun identifying students with SEND using a range of assessments including outside specialists, but not all students identified as having SEND appear on the SEND register. A child can be known to need help and still be invisible in the system that allocates it. That is the specific thing to ask about, and it is a failure mode this register has not previously been able to name so precisely. Context belongs beside it and is published there: at fees of roughly AED 3,100 to 6,260 this is among the most affordable schools in the emirate, serving a community with very few alternatives, and it has climbed from eight years rated Weak to Acceptable overall. Both facts are true at once. Japanese School Dubai: no published inclusion rating found in verified sources, stated plainly, with the note that a Japanese national curriculum school serving a specific expatriate community should be assessed on its own terms - and the three questions to ask instead.
- Inclusion sweep, eightieth tranche. Lycée Libanais Francophone Privé: Very Good, just over 100 students identified with additional learning needs, and inspection commentary that is unusually specific about method - a clear inclusion policy, effective early identification using diagnostic tools including CAT4, strong collaboration between teachers, parents and the inclusion team, detailed observation logs and well-targeted interventions, with parent partnership rated Outstanding. Three development points published alongside: refine personalised plans so they carry measurable outcomes, align diagnoses fully with KHDA categories of need, and strengthen provision for gifted students. Two things families themselves raise are recorded too - Arabic needs consolidating at Lycée level, and the impact of the Taaleem acquisition is being watched closely. Bilingual French International School: no separately published inclusion rating found in verified sources, and we say so rather than infer one from its Very Good overall. What the record does show is a genuine climb across a decade, and the page gives families the three questions to ask instead - including what provision exists in the senior grades, which have only just been built out.
- Inclusion sweep, seventy-ninth tranche - the Jean Mermoz campuses, and one of the most complete inspector descriptions of an inclusion operation in this register. Lycée Français Jean Mermoz: Very Good, 120 students of determination on a 1:13 ratio, meeting the physical needs of students including wheelchair users, with the inclusion leader sitting inside a Pôle d’Inclusion that comprises two psychologists or counsellors, the principal, heads of phase and a governor - so inclusion has leadership, clinical expertise and governance in the same room, which is rare. Most lesson plans are carefully differentiated so students of determination have activities pitched at their own level, identification runs through observation and assessment data, and the team works with parents to celebrate successes and build self-esteem. The published gap is specific: middle leaders and classroom teachers lack sufficient understanding to use assessment data effectively for differentiated planning. The South campus has no inclusion rating of its own and the page says so, treating the North model as a well-founded expectation rather than a result - with the note that two counsellors served over 1,400 students at North, a ratio worth monitoring as South grows, and that admissions there weigh ‘savoir-être’ alongside academic readiness.
- Inclusion sweep, seventy-eighth tranche, and the most serious inclusion finding this register has published. Emirates National Schools Dubai: inclusion rated Weak, with inspectors stating plainly that ‘there is no inclusion leader’ and that as a result provision lacks strategic direction, monitoring, challenge and leadership support for staff - adding that identification processes are underdeveloped and that there are too many students whose learning needs are not being met. That has to be read against the requirement we published two builds ago: every private school in Dubai is required to run an inclusion support team led by a named inclusion champion. Two things are recorded in the school’s favour and both are real - the inclusion governor is committed to developing an inclusive ethos, and admission procedures welcome students with more complex learning needs. But welcoming a child through the door is not the same as meeting their needs once inside, and inspectors have said so. Also encoded: PACE Modern British School, Acceptable, 62 students of determination, with the note that its planned BTEC pathway faces UK discontinuation over the coming years; and Vernus International, where inspectors record genuine kindness and inclusivity in the culture alongside leadership described as an acceptable foundation rather than a strong one.
- Inclusion sweep, seventy-seventh tranche, and a strengthening of the rights section. Dubai Modern Education School: the school describes itself as inclusive and non-discriminatory, with over 2,200 students across more than 50 nationalities in a dual US and Ministry of Education curriculum model - but we found no separate published KHDA inclusion rating in verified sources and say so rather than infer one. Its published admissions detail matters: applications are accepted without discrimination, but the decision to offer a place rests on availability and entrance test results, so that test is consequential and a family should ask what it decides. The page tells readers to weigh this against the inspection finding already published there, that teaching is weak in the elementary and middle phases of the US section. Added to the key-findings page: the framework behind all of this, named. KHDA’s Dubai Inclusive Education Policy Framework, launched 2017 under the Dubai Disabilities Strategy and the ‘My community… a city for everyone’ initiative, set the expectation that private schools would be fully inclusive by 2020 - meaning a student of determination should be able to enrol in any mainstream private school in Dubai without the risk of rejection. Principals acknowledged then that not every school had the staff or budget. Our school pages show how uneven it still is. But that expectation is the standard a child is entitled to be measured against, not an aspiration.
- Inclusion sweep, seventy-sixth tranche, and a number that needs reading carefully. Russian International School: inclusion rated Good - but only 10 students are identified as students of determination in a school of over 500, one of the lowest identification rates anywhere in this register. Provision for those ten is genuinely good, under a knowledgeable inclusion manager, and the school operates a Social Inclusion Model with admission open without restriction. But a very low identified cohort can mean genuinely low need, or it can mean needs are not being found, and in a school delivering a foreign national curriculum to a largely single-language community that question belongs directly to the inclusion manager. This register will keep saying it: a small number is not automatically good news. Gulf Model School: the school describes an inclusive environment with a committed support team, but we found no separate published KHDA inclusion rating in verified sources and say so rather than infer one. It climbed from Weak to Acceptable in 2022-23, which is real movement for the students inside it, and families needing structured support are told to treat a visit as essential and given the three questions to ask.
- Inclusion sweep, seventy-fifth tranche. JSS Private School: Very Good, 155 students of determination in a school of about 2,100, with well-resourced SEN provision, a formal gifted and talented identification programme, and five guidance counsellors across the roll - a ratio families should note when judging pastoral depth. Very Good has been held across three consecutive inspection cycles after Good ratings from 2014 to 2019, and its reading literacy benchmark rose 49 points to 582 in 2023, a progression KHDA rated Outstanding. The page also carries the warning this register issues wherever names collide: JSS International is a different school with a different curriculum, CICSE rather than CBSE. And Al Mizhar American Academy, which now operates as American Academy for Girls - the entry points families searching the old name to the current one, where the provision is documented: around 100 students of determination at the November 2023 inspection, a significant 18% of the roll, in a school whose operator helped develop KHDA’s Inclusive Education Policy. A school changing its name should not cost a family the information they need.
- Inclusion sweep, seventy-fourth tranche. Arab Unity School: KHDA’s inclusion rating table records Good, above the school’s Acceptable overall rating, with approximately 192 students of determination supported by an inclusion team creating individual learning plans and integrating students into mainstream classes. Its admissions policy is published in unusual detail and every SEN family should read it - it follows Federal Law 29 of 2006 and the Dubai Inclusive Policy Framework, admission depends on seat availability and the school’s capacity to address the specific need, and admission is not conditional on a medical diagnosis. One clause deserves attention rather than alarm, and we publish it plainly: the policy states that if a student’s need later poses a threat to the safety of self or peers, parents will be asked to withdraw the child and guided to alternatives. Ask what threshold applies, and who decides. Ambassador International Academy: KHDA records robust identification systems and states the large majority of students of determination make very good progress, with parents and community rated Outstanding and curriculum design Outstanding - and the school foregrounds inclusive education and advocacy on its own public site, so this is not a hidden or reluctant part of the proposition. Published with the counterweight: variability in Arabic, and inconsistency in teaching and assessment in parts of KG and lower primary.
- Inclusion sweep, seventy-third tranche, and two affordable schools whose inclusion machinery outclasses their fee bracket. The Oxford School: Good and improving, approximately 147 students supported by a dedicated team of counsellor, special educator and class teachers, with education plans developed after psycho-educational assessments, a dedicated inclusion centre, and - the detail that matters most - an admission process that screens for needs early, so support is in place from the start rather than after a child struggles. Published with the honest limits: a narrow A Level range focused on Commerce and Science, Primary mathematics still a work in progress, and a functional rather than premium campus, because the value here is in the people not the infrastructure. Al Sadiq Islamic English School: Good, with identification and support systems described by inspectors as clear and inclusive, around 80 students of determination, and a named team of a Head of Inclusion, four Learning Support Assistants, a Support Teacher, a SEN Specialist Teacher and a Wellbeing Counsellor. English-as-additional-language provision is managed through the inclusion team at no additional cost, parent communication is rated Very Good, the highest element of its inspection - and basic tuition runs from roughly AED 4,579 to 9,281. That is a full inclusion department at close to the lowest fees in the emirate.
- Inclusion sweep, seventy-second tranche, drawing on KHDA’s own published inclusion rating table. The International School of Choueifat Al Sufouh: 83 students of determination, with inspectors reporting that the school’s resistance to curriculum flexibility, inclusion adaptation and more student-centred learning continues to limit progress, and recommending that qualified teachers be appointed in Inclusion. The SABIS system is tightly structured by design - a strength for students who thrive on it, a constraint for a child who needs the curriculum bent around them, and we say so in those terms. Choueifat DIP: 49 students of determination at just under 2% of the roll, one of the lowest proportions in this register, with KHDA’s table recording this branch as Weak for inclusion and inspectors finding the rigidity of the SABIS system limits responsiveness to inclusion and personalised learning. The Philippine School: our sources conflict and we publish both rather than choose - KHDA’s inclusion table records Weak, while a review source reporting the 2023-24 inspection describes provision as Acceptable, and the two may reflect different years. What is consistent is 101 students of determination, a qualified inclusion leader appointed, positive parent relationships with the inclusion and counselling teams - and the limits, that support plans vary in quality, gifted provision is underdeveloped, and curriculum pathways for students of determination are limited, particularly around future qualifications.
- Inclusion sweep, seventy-first tranche. Al Maaref American School: inspectors record inclusive admission procedures and improving support for students of determination, with only a small cohort identified at the 2024 inspection - and we note on the page that a small cohort is itself worth asking about, because it can mean low need or low identification, and those are very different things. Curriculum adaptations do not always cater to higher and lower attainers, leadership roles lack clarity and self-evaluation is overly optimistic. One piece of context belongs with it: Emirati enrolment has fallen from over 400 in 2020 to around 160, which follows the regulator’s guidance to Emirati families to move to schools rated Good or better - the mechanism our key-findings page explains, visible here in actual numbers. North American International School: no published inclusion rating found in any source we can verify, and rather than infer one from the overall Acceptable judgement, the page says so plainly and gives families the three questions to ask instead - how many students of determination are on roll, who leads inclusion, and what the entry assessment is actually used to decide.
- Inclusion sweep, seventieth tranche, and a second Weak inclusion judgement. Buds Public School: inspectors found that teachers do not adapt the curriculum in ways that help them adequately meet the needs of all groups of students, including students of determination and those with particular gifts and talents, and recommended a review of the entire system of monitoring and support. 40 students of determination were identified. The school publishes no detail about facilities or support for additional learning needs despite being required under KHDA policy to have them in place - and that absence is itself the finding. Primus Private School: Good, 53 students of determination through a dedicated Student Development Centre covering literacy, mathematics, speaking and listening, social, motor and life skills - with the familiar pair of caveats, a mismatch between vision and classroom practice in how education plans are implemented, and curriculum modifications for higher-ability students not yet well embedded. Dhruv Global School: Acceptable on its first inspection in February 2026, 22 students identified, an Inclusion Support Team under a named Head of Inclusion, and an admissions process that is unusually transparent - the admissions test may be waived, the family meets the Inclusion Department to plan support, admission depends on the school’s capacity to provide it, and individualised service agreements may be signed where needed. That last phrase is the KHDA-registered mechanism we published on the key-findings page, named openly by a school for once.
- Inclusion sweep, sixty-ninth tranche, and the first Weak inclusion rating this register has published. Woodlem Park School: inclusion rated Weak, downgraded from Acceptable, and we publish the inspectors’ wording rather than soften it - leaders do not have a cohesive vision for inclusion, systems of accountability and support are insufficient, assessment data are not used effectively to monitor classroom practice and adapt the curriculum, there is insufficient investment in the recruitment of experienced staff, and the school provides limited support for students of determination and for those who are gifted and talented. 62 students of determination are on roll. Its fees are among the lowest in Dubai and its KG phase draws warm parent feedback for phonics-focused early literacy, and both of those are true too - but a family whose child needs structured learning support should read that wording carefully before applying. New Indian Model School: Good, with inspectors describing the inclusion team as providing a positive service and identification as accurate - and a discrepancy we are publishing rather than resolving, because one source reports around 900 students of determination and another 532. We could not reconcile them, so both appear. Bright Riders School: Good, describing itself as inclusive in the true sense of the word with students who have physical challenges, high-functioning autism and learning difficulties integral to school culture - published with the DSIB finding that students of determination and gifted learners are not yet consistently challenged.
- Inclusion sweep, sixty-eighth tranche, and three schools where the inclusion rating and the overall rating tell different stories. School of Modern Skills: inclusion rated Good against an Acceptable overall rating - 84 students of determination plus students identified with gifts, talents and English language needs, a qualified team including an inclusion champion, modified curricula, learning laboratories and a sensory room, early identification, good progress from starting points and parents satisfied with communication. The caveat: tracking systems require further development to fully inform personalised planning. American School of Creative Science: inclusion Very Good against a Good overall rating, with an inclusive ethos, personalised interventions and careful monitoring through its Effective Learning Provision team, wellbeing Very Good and safeguarding Outstanding - published with the limits, that Arabic attainment lags the strongest core subjects, mathematics consistency is uneven and there are no published senior external results yet. And Durham School Dubai, where inspectors are unusually blunt: 50 registered students of determination, provision caring in intent but reactive in practice, insufficient infrastructure, inconsistent education plans, limited monitoring of impact, and zero guidance counsellors on roll. A separate Durham School UK quality visit found teaching standards high with differentiation a strength, so classroom practice may be ahead of the systems around it - but a family needing structured, monitored support should question this school closely rather than assume.
- Inclusion sweep, sixty-seventh tranche. Raffles International School: described by DSIB as fully inclusive with 147 students of determination - and two facts that give the phrase weight rather than leaving it decorative. Assessment processes in Secondary and Post-16 were rated Outstanding, the highest possible grade, which means teachers are using data exceptionally well to drive progress, and data is the machinery inclusion actually runs on. The outcomes hold across a genuinely mixed intake: 42% of GCSE grades at 7 to 9, 100% of Year 13 students reported achieving university acceptance, in a school with a large English-as-additional-language population, with mathematics attainment Very Good in every phase from Foundation Stage to Post-16. Dar Al Marefa: Good for inclusion, with special education services designed around the demands of a bilingual IB curriculum - the only school in Dubai offering the IB bilingually in Arabic and English, including the reduced IB Courses Programme, which is itself a route for students who would struggle with the full Diploma. Published with the inspectors’ finding that alternative curriculum pathways are otherwise absent, and with the July 2024 leadership change to a principal who previously raised Raffles International to Very Good.
- The most consequential thing we have published about school fees, and it reframes dozens of entries in this register. KHDA’s Directives and Guidelines for Inclusive Education require private schools in Dubai to provide the standard school service for students of determination as part of the standard tuition fee. Enhanced provision may be charged for only in exceptional circumstances, only under an individualised service agreement between parent and school that must be registered with KHDA, at a fee that must be no more than the actual cost of the services provided, only where the provision is genuinely not available through the standard service, and with clear documentation to both the parent and the regulator that it is necessary. KHDA reviews and monitors those agreements and they may lead to follow-up or action. That rule now opens the fee section of our key-findings page, ahead of everything else, because this register has documented school after school where parents fund one-to-one learning support assistants - and a family quoted a support fee is entitled to ask three questions: is this registered with KHDA, is it priced at actual cost, and what documentation shows it is necessary rather than routine. Also encoded this tranche: The Indian High School Garhoud, Good, with 190-plus students identified with special educational needs and inspectors’ caveat that differentiated learning activities for those students and for gifted students are not consistent.
- Inclusion sweep, sixty-fifth tranche: The Indian High School, deepened - 220 students with additional learning needs at the 2023-24 inspection in a school of over 5,300, with 317 teachers, three teaching assistants and eleven guidance counsellors on a 1:16 ratio. Inspectors record that the inclusion team works effectively to ensure early and accurate identification of needs, and that students of determination make good progress with personalised learning plans, with personal and social development rated Outstanding. The context that gives those numbers their weight: fees run from roughly AED 5,525 in Grade 5 to AED 10,465 in Grade 12, placing this level of provision at the very bottom of Dubai’s fee range. The page also carries the structural note families miss - this is the Grades 5 to 12 campus, with KG to Grade 4 taught at Garhoud, which holds a different rating. Eleven guidance counsellors for a school at these fees is a number worth sitting with, and it is the kind of fact that only appears when someone reads past the rating.
- Inclusion sweep, sixty-fourth tranche, and an entry upgraded from unverified to sourced. GEMS Legacy School previously carried only the school’s own stated commitment, clearly labelled as such because we had found no regulator judgement. Inspector findings are now available and they are specific in both directions: robust procedures for identifying students of determination, personalised support for the highest level of need described as very effective, and increased staffing having a positive impact - set against ‘support by class teachers is variable’ and ‘provision for gifted and talented students is underdeveloped’. GEMS Our Own English High School, deepened: approximately 13% of students have an additional learning requirement, which in a school of around 10,000 means well over a thousand students of determination - the largest inclusion operation documented anywhere in this register. GEMS Our Own Indian School: 349 children of determination among roughly 3,735 students at fees of AED 6,500 to 13,300, one of the largest cohorts in Dubai at one of the lowest price points. Across all three, the same failure mode recurs: assessment and planning handled well by the SEN team, delivery by individual subject teachers inconsistent. Ask to see how an IEP appears in a subject teacher’s lesson plan - that single request tests the thing that most often goes wrong.
- Inclusion sweep, sixty-third tranche - the two Dubai National School campuses, and a divergence families must see. Al Barsha: 106 students of determination, with inspectors naming strong provision among the school’s strengths, a thorough identification and assessment system, appropriately targeted intervention plans, and a published compliance statement covering the KHDA framework, Ministry of Education SEND laws and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Two honest findings sit against it: inspectors record that ‘the progress of students of determination is variable and dependent upon the quality of teaching’, with not all teachers understanding the practices that promote good progress - and plans to install elevators improving access for students with mobility needs had not been implemented at the time of the 2023-24 inspection, which is a practical accessibility gap to raise directly. Al Twar: inclusion rated Acceptable, below the standard the regulator expects, with support varying by lesson and provision less developed for gifted students. Same name, same group, different provision - and a family assuming the two campuses are interchangeable would be making an expensive mistake.
- Inclusion sweep, sixty-second tranche - the Al Ittihad schools. Al Mamzar: around 45 students of determination in a school of over 1,800, with a dedicated team providing clear individual education plans and detailed identification processes, and inspectors recording that ‘the effective work of the inclusion team ensures that students of determination make good progress overall’ with personal support building self-confidence and resilience. Published with two precise asks and one parent concern: ensure the modifications set out in IEPs are actually included in all classroom lesson plans, ensure planned modifications are delivered in lessons because support was found not always reliable in the classroom, and - raised by parents themselves - reduce staff turnover. The gap between a plan on paper and a plan delivered in the room is the single most common failure mode this sweep has documented, and here inspectors named it directly. Al Safa, upgraded: Very Good for both inclusion and wellbeing above its Good overall rating, with inspectors naming ‘the school’s inclusive ethos and the high quality of care and support provided for all students, including students of determination’ among its strengths, a highly qualified team with clear strategic plans, and precise entry assessment processes - in a school where almost 90% of 2,850 students are from Emirati families.
- Inclusion sweep, sixty-first tranche - the Al Mawakeb campuses, and an admissions position every family should read before applying. The group publishes it plainly: the Principal and Senior Leadership Team are authorised to admit students ‘when they determine that adequate provision can be made’ for a child’s particular needs, and expect an assessment from an external agent such as an educational psychologist or occupational therapist providing data on strengths, challenges and suggested strategies. That is a capacity-based admission with an external-report expectation - materially different from the schools in this register that admit without requiring a diagnosis, and a family should know which kind of door they are knocking on. To the group’s real credit, it also publishes and links KHDA’s ‘Advocating for Inclusive Education’ parent guide, actively pointing families toward their own rights. Al Khawaneej is the newest campus, opened in 2018, so the page tells families to ask specifically how the inclusion team there is staffed rather than assume parity with the older schools.
- Inclusion sweep, sixtieth tranche: Our Own High School Al Warqa’a, where DSIB inspectors recognised the Inclusion Department as a success story - an open-door policy with the counsellor and accommodations in line with the Dubai Inclusive Education Policy Framework and UAE law - and then set out with unusual precision what still needs to change. Extend provision so the inclusion team is fully represented within senior leadership; ensure there are sufficient learning support assistants to maximise the progress of all students of determination; and ensure class teachers are fully informed about exceptional learning needs and develop the expertise to provide consistently high-quality modification and support. Those three asks are published on the page because they are a checklist a parent can put directly to the school, item by item, and ask what has changed. This is a boys’ school of roughly 4,700 students, Good for seven consecutive years, at fees of about AED 8,700 to 14,600 - which makes the scale of that inclusion operation, and the honesty of its remaining gaps, worth understanding together.
- Inclusion sweep, fifty-ninth tranche - three Acceptable-tier schools, written with the same care as any Outstanding page. Ignite School: over 100 students of determination, 102 at the last inspection and double the number two years earlier, one of the highest proportions in its sector, with early identification, individualised plans, a sensory and adaptive room, and inspectors recording that most students of determination make good progress academically, socially and personally - published alongside the finding that internally assessed results run consistently higher than external benchmarks, and that three consecutive Acceptable ratings carry particular regulatory weight for its substantial Emirati cohort. Cedar School: 40 students needing SEN support, over 10% of enrolment, with inspectors recording a qualified and experienced head of inclusion, resources matched to needs, and students of determination fully included in all activities - and the specific caveat that curriculum modification across different subjects was inconsistent. Oak Tree Primary: a dedicated head of Inclusion within an improved middle leadership structure, published with two things to weigh - parent partnership rated Acceptable and described as underdeveloped, and a documented leadership discrepancy, where the inspection report names one principal and the school website another, with no public confirmation of when that changed. Ask who is leading the school today, and since when.
- Inclusion sweep, fifty-eighth tranche, and a piece of regulation almost no family knows about. Under KHDA’s published school policy, a school that chooses not to admit a student of determination must complete a ‘Non-admission’ form and upload it to the KHDA system within two working days of declining. A refusal is therefore not a private conversation with an admissions officer - it is a recorded event with the regulator, and a parent who is turned down may reasonably ask whether that form has been submitted. That is now on the key-findings page alongside the rest of the admission rights. Two schools encoded with it. Citizens School: 67 students of determination in a school of roughly 700, with WellComm and CAT4 assessments determining support needs and an Individual Learning Support Assistant provided where required - and a published inclusion policy that cites Federal Law 29/2006 directly, that special needs in themselves are not an obstruction to admission. Dunecrest American School: pastoral care Very Good across all phases, management and resources Outstanding, a policy that explicitly recognises twice-exceptional students, and a clear statement that provision exceeding the KHDA framework requires a KHDA-certified Independent Learning Support Assistant. Establish who employs and pays that assistant before you apply.
- Inclusion sweep, fifty-seventh tranche: German International School Dubai, where inclusion is rated Very Good - above the school’s overall rating - with 61 students of determination identified at the 2024 inspection, inspectors recording leaders and governors as highly committed to inclusive education, an Inclusion Support Team running a special educational curriculum, and a favourable ratio of roughly 1:10. Three things a family must weigh are published alongside, all from the school or its inspectors. The special educational curriculum must be agreed with parents and comes at an additional cost. Entry involves placement testing, with students achieving far below age expectations counted as SEND candidates, so that assessment is consequential rather than routine. And wellbeing is rated only Good, with inspectors finding that governors and senior leaders ‘have not yet facilitated a shared vision for the wellbeing of all’, which constrains planning - a notable gap in a school whose inclusion provision is otherwise strong. Strong inclusion and unsettled wellbeing can coexist in the same school, and a family should know both before they choose.
- Inclusion sweep, fifty-sixth tranche. South View School: 92 students with SEN requirements supported by a Head of Inclusion, two SENCOs, four teachers and additional learning support assistants - and one detail that is architectural rather than administrative, that the Inclusion Department sits at the heart of the school rather than tucked away, which the school describes as a physical representation of its philosophy. ‘The Base’ operates at break and lunchtime as an inclusive gathering spot where students can socialise, which addresses the part of the school day that is hardest for many children with additional needs and which almost no school thinks to design for. Dove Green Private School: began as an academic and SEND selective school and has since fully embraced the Dubai Inclusive Framework - a documented shift this register states plainly, because a school that used to select is not the same school as one that never did, and the change is recent. Provision covers in-class support, phonics and mathematics interventions, social skills groups, pastoral care, gifted groups and English language support, on roughly a 1:13 ratio.
- Inclusion sweep, fifty-fifth tranche, and the fullest fee breakdown for learning support we have yet verified - banked, not published, because the school it concerns is not in this register. Kent College Dubai holds Very Good for 2023-24, with inspectors calling it ‘a fully inclusive school, with excellent care and support for all students’ and issuing a single recommendation: raise achievement in all subjects to very good or better. 79 students of determination among roughly 800 students on a 1:10 ratio, with a 20-pupil cap in senior classes. Its Achievement Centre runs interventions across literacy, numeracy, motor and social skills, emotional regulation and life skills, with a bespoke personalised curriculum for Level 3 students, ASDAN as an alternative SEND pathway, a performance pathway for gifted students, and partnerships with external psychology and therapy agencies. And the fee structure, which is the most transparent we have found anywhere: there are no additional fees for English language provision; the school helps parents source individual learning support assistants and nearly all are under school contract with an option of visa and medical cover, with cost depending on hours; and speech and language and occupational therapy costs are arranged directly between parents and their chosen centres. That is a school telling families exactly what they will pay and to whom, before they ask. When Kent College enters this register, all of it publishes.
- Inclusion sweep, fifty-fourth tranche. Dwight School Dubai: its Quest Programme has the broadest stated scope in this register - students of determination, students with gifts and talents, twice-exceptional students, and students with English language needs, all supported through targeted intervention inside the common learning environment. Twice-exceptional means a child who is both gifted and has a learning difficulty, and it is a group almost no school in this market names at all, let alone builds provision for; those children are routinely missed because their ability masks their difficulty and their difficulty masks their ability. Approximately 25% of students receive additional support, 7% on the SEND register, a similar proportion identified as gifted, and around 11% receiving English language support. Regent International, deepened: 36 students of determination supported through the Achievement Centre, which assesses learning, language and social-emotional needs on entry, with Individual Achievement Plans written in partnership with student, teachers and parents - and the school stating plainly that it is an inclusive school, not a specialist SEN institution.
- Inclusion sweep, fifty-third tranche: Victory Heights Primary School City of Arabia, which opened in 2025 and has no KHDA rating, because a first full inspection normally comes only in a school’s third year of operation. What is verifiable is the transplant, and it is unusually complete: the leadership team, the ELLI learning framework, the inclusion philosophy and the academic benchmarks were all brought across from Victory Heights Sports City, which holds Outstanding from both KHDA and British Schools Overseas including Outstanding for inclusion, and the founding principal came from inside that school. The inclusion team works with teachers and families to provide support where required, on a purpose-built campus. The page still says what it must: the Outstanding belongs to the sister school and not to this one, and primary-only means the Year 6 move needs planning from the day you enrol. Transplanted people and frameworks are the strongest signal a new school can offer - and they are still a signal, not a result.
- Inclusion sweep, fifty-second tranche: Dubai Heights Academy, deepened - a school launched as part of Dubai’s ‘My Community… A City for Everyone’ initiative and built from opening in 2017 to be a model for inclusion. The team is named in full, and the physical provision is the most detailed in this register: an Enrichment Zone with a Wonder World Snoezelen room using fibre-optic light therapy, a Fun Junction sensory room with a magnetic climbing wall, a sensory sound garden and therapy support classrooms, with a speech and language therapist and an occupational therapist on site twice weekly delivering group therapy inside classrooms, and physiotherapy available. Additional curriculum pathways include BTEC Level 1 and ASDAN, and wellbeing and personal development are both Outstanding across all phases. Published with two costs to settle in writing: where a child needs a one-to-one learning support assistant the school helps parents interview and hire a suitable candidate but the parent pays, and the gap between discounted and KHDA-approved fees is a conversation to have with admissions before signing rather than after.
- Inclusion sweep, fifty-first tranche: GEMS FirstPoint School, whose Inclusion Support Team is among the largest documented in this register - three specialist teachers, seventeen Learning Support Assistants and fifteen Inclusion Champions, one in every year team and one in every subject department. That last structure is worth naming, because it means inclusion has an owner in each part of the school rather than sitting in one office at the end of a corridor. Inspectors record that the principal and governing board ensure a highly inclusive ethos with high levels of sustained investment, thorough identification systems covering students of determination and gifted students, and effective support for most groups. Published with two commercial facts a family must settle before applying: every child is tested for English language proficiency on admission and specialist provision, if required, is chargeable with the amount set by level of need and advised only at that point - and tuition excludes uniforms, lunches, transport, trips and external extracurricular activities. A charge whose size you learn after you have accepted a place is a charge worth asking about first.
- Inclusion sweep, fiftieth tranche - the Emirates International schools, and the single strongest inspector endorsement in this entire dataset. Of EIS Meadows, DSIB wrote: ‘In this very inclusive school, all students, including students of determination and those who are gifted and talented, almost always have their needs fully met. The skillful inclusion team manage a varied range of students’ needs with sensitivity and expertise. Most students make strong progress towards their individual education plan targets.’ Published with the development point inspectors named, that leaders are still working on how information about gifted students is shared to provide additional challenge in lessons. EIS Jumeirah: 120 students of determination at just over 5% of the cohort, running a graduated Assess, Plan, Do, Review approach tracked through an Inclusion Register, with one-to-one IEPs, small-group intervention, in-class support, modified curriculum, inclusive technology, examination access arrangements and partnerships with external therapy centres, and IEPs formally reviewed at least three times a year with parents and external agencies present. The cost line families must establish before applying: Wave 3 students requiring a one-to-one Learning Support Assistant are funded by families. Fiftieth tranche, and that question - which tier is charged for - has now proven decisive at more schools than any other.
- Inclusion sweep, forty-ninth tranche: GEMS Al Khaleej International School, and the most granular tier breakdown published anywhere in this register. Very Good for both inclusion and wellbeing, above the school’s Good overall rating, with around 110 students holding SEN requirements - 6 receiving Level 3 support, 47 Level 2 and 9 Level 1 - plus 25 designated gifted and talented. The team is four dedicated SEN teachers and three learning support or shadow teachers, with three fully equipped resource rooms, assessment batteries and four guidance counsellors. Inspectors record robust identification systems covering students of determination including those who may be gifted, with challenge and support matched to their needs evident in most lessons across all phases, and parents and governors serving in designated roles as Inclusion and Wellbeing Champions. One further fact shapes everything else on this page: around 85% of students are English language learners, since Arabic or another language is their first. A school where nearly everyone is learning in a second language is running a different kind of inclusion operation, and a family should read it that way.
- Inclusion sweep, forty-eighth tranche: the Star International campuses, and an admissions mechanism worth understanding in full. 101 students of determination are supported across Al Twar and Al Qusais, with an experienced inclusion team working alongside class teachers so personalised strategies are embedded in daily lessons, and a purposeful room on each campus for one-to-one or small-group intervention. The school follows the Assess, Plan, Do, Review cycle using the 2019 Directives and Guidelines for Inclusive Education, and identification runs either through its own specialist team or a formal medical diagnosis - meaning a diagnosis is not the only route in, which matters for families still waiting on assessment. Every admission involving a student of determination is handled by the inclusion team under the Inclusion Champion, and the school may issue a ‘Conditional Acceptance’ with conditions and a timeline shared and counter-signed by all present. That document is the thing to obtain and read carefully. Inspectors asked that individual education plan targets be made precise and measurable, and that curriculum modifications be monitored for actual impact rather than assumed.
- Inclusion sweep, forty-seventh tranche. Al Salam Community School: holds the SEND Inclusion Award for 2026-2028, external validation of early identification, adaptive teaching and partnership with parents - an award granted after independent review rather than self-declaration, which is the distinction this register keeps drawing. Published inclusion and gifted policies, accommodations monitored through formal agreements, and a campus designed to be accessible for people of determination. Two things to establish in writing before applying: some additional staff support may incur extra fees, and the school does not describe itself as a specialist SEN institution. Its sister campus registers almost 19% of students as students of determination, among the highest proportions in the UAE, but that is a different school and this one should be judged on its own provision. Newlands School: fully inclusive admissions, genuinely welcoming to children of all ability levels, personal development and parent engagement both Very Good, and teachers who know their students - published with a substantial counterweight, that first-cohort IGCSE outcomes were described as disappointing, inspectors called for raised teaching standards, the school holds no external accreditation, and there is no qualified counsellor, which is a real gap in a school that emphasises wellbeing.
- Inclusion sweep, forty-sixth tranche: Dubai International Academy Emirates Hills, and the single most important distinction this register draws. The school’s overall rating is Outstanding - the only IB continuum school in Dubai to hold it - but its provision and outcomes for students of determination are rated Very Good, one level below. For a family whose child needs support, that second number describes their child’s daily experience and the first one does not. Inspectors found timely and accurate identification, supportive classrooms, personalised learning plans and differentiated instruction covering both students of determination and high achievers, with overall care and support Outstanding - alongside two published development points: strengthen the inclusion improvement plan so barriers to learning for students of determination are reduced, and engage the parents of all identified students rather than most. The senior structure helps: all four IB programmes including the Career-related Programme, so a non-Diploma route exists. And a practical note from parents - admission is competitive, with waiting lists requiring persistent follow-up.
- Inclusion sweep, forty-fifth tranche, including a correction. GEMS Modern Academy: our entry said around 300 students of determination and gifted learners; the figure in the sources we can verify is around 220, supported by the SEN team in a school of 3,860 with 239 teachers and 74 teaching assistants. Corrected. The rest stands and is strengthened: one of the few schools in Dubai rated Outstanding for provision and support of students with additional learning needs, with personal development, understanding of Islamic values and Emirati culture, and social responsibility and innovation skills all Outstanding across all four phases - and the two caveats retained, that not every identified student joins the support programme and that inspectors asked for inclusion staffing sufficient for effective monitoring. GEMS Founders Al Mizhar, deepened: grown from over 3,000 students in March 2022 to more than 4,000 by February 2024, including 520 Emirati students, on a 1:17 ratio - with the point that rapid growth is itself a pressure on any inclusion department, so ask how staffing has kept pace. Its April 2025 British Schools Overseas inspection, conducted when no KHDA inspections were scheduled, rated the quality of education Outstanding.
- Inclusion sweep, forty-fourth tranche - two ISP schools, and a distinction worth naming. Nibras International: 99 students of determination among around 1,488, with an inclusion team running classroom strategies, small-group interventions and individualised plans, and an inclusion governor on the board specifically to champion inclusion. Two findings sit together on the page because both are true - inspectors named support for students of determination and gifted learners as an area for improvement and asked for assessment data to be used more effectively to personalise learning, while also recording that students themselves are ‘particularly sensitive toward students of determination, showing care and kindness’. Culture and provision are not the same thing, and at this school the culture is ahead of the systems. The Aquila School, deepened: very good to outstanding provision praised by both inspectorates, Outstanding from British Schools Overseas in 2025, and a senior structure that matters for planning - IGCSE followed by a choice of IB Diploma, IB Career-related Programme or BTEC. Three distinct routes through Sixth Form is a genuine structural advantage for a student who will not thrive on a single academic track.
- Inclusion sweep, forty-third tranche: The Arbor School, deepened, and staffed at a level few schools match. Its Thrive department leads support for students of determination, English-language learners and gifted students with a team of 20 - a Head of Thrive, SEN coordinators, an Accomplished Learner Lead for gifted students, an English as an Additional Language Lead, further inclusion teachers and counsellors. Over 150 students, more than 10% of the roll, have additional learning needs including a small number with high-level requirements, and four guidance counsellors serve 1,229 students. Care and support is Very Good across all three phases, and parents cite inclusion as their main reason for choosing the school. Published with the two things to clarify before applying: enhanced SEND provision, where a child’s level of need requires it, is charged separately under its own contract, and the secondary phase is still maturing. This school also sits at the centre of a point worth restating - it is rated Very Good for inclusion rather than Outstanding, and is still regularly named among the strongest SEN providers in Dubai. Ratings rank schools against a framework; they do not always capture what a department actually feels like to a family inside it.
- Inclusion sweep, forty-second tranche: Safa Community School, Outstanding from both KHDA and British Schools Overseas, with inspectors stating plainly that ‘the quality of support for students of determination is highly effective’. Around 15% of students identified with SEND requirements and roughly 25% receiving English as an Additional Language support - and one category almost no other school in this register tracks: ‘Arabic C’ students, those holding Arabic passports who do not speak Arabic, a genuine and widely ignored need in this city. Two further details stand out. The 2022-23 report credited the school for giving students of determination a voice by involving them actively in designing their own education plans, and inspectors record that students of determination themselves speak enthusiastically about the wellbeing curriculum. A school that asks a child to help write their own plan, and whose inspectors quote those children directly, is describing something a rating cannot. Published with the practical warning that it is heavily oversubscribed.
- Inclusion sweep, forty-first tranche: GEMS Dubai American Academy, and a growth curve worth publishing on its own. Outstanding for inclusion, over 320 students of determination - up from 124 identified in 2013-14, 220 by 2018-19 and 334 by 2022-23, with SEND provision rated Very Good in 2018-19 before reaching Outstanding in 2022-23 and holding it. A school that trebled its identified cohort while improving its inclusion rating is doing something real, and the numbers say so more convincingly than any prospectus. The structure: a K-12 inclusion delivery model with a graduated system of support, individual education plans, one-to-one services, an inclusion governor and an inclusion champion, and the GEP programme offering High School Diploma equivalency as an alternative route. Non-selective, with students not refused admission based only on SEND, no medical diagnosis required to apply, and sibling priority for students who experience SEND. The page also notes the school assesses applicants and requests existing psychologist or therapy reports - described as essential to resourcing rather than a barrier, which is a distinction families should test.
- Inclusion sweep, fortieth tranche - the Dubai British Schools, three campuses at three completely different stages, described as such. Emirates Hills: Outstanding, just over 100 students at around 9% of the roll, with inspectors recording that governors and leaders ensure provision for students of determination is of the highest quality across the school, ASDAN available as a life-skills route alongside mainstream support, and the same coordinator running the gifted and talented programme - published with the honest note that the campus is relatively compact. Jumeira: around 10% registered with additional learning needs and up to a quarter of students supported in total, with a head of inclusion who joined from Arcadia British School and is widely credited with the Outstanding inclusion ratings that school holds from both KHDA and BSO - which for a school with no inspection record of its own is a more meaningful signal than group branding. Mira: 54 students on SEND provision, numbers deliberately kept manageable while systems embed, support largely push-in rather than withdrawal, and the school describing its own inclusion as an area of active development rather than a finished model. That last phrase is unusually candid, and it is exactly why a family needing highly specialised provision should ask what exists today rather than what is planned.
- Inclusion sweep, thirty-ninth tranche - the JESS campuses, and the most comprehensively staffed inclusion operation documented anywhere in this register. Across both schools close to 400 students, roughly 15% of the roll, are registered as students of determination, supported by an inclusion team of 23 staff: Teachers of Inclusion, Independent Learning Support Assistants, occupational therapists and speech and language therapists. A further 452 students receive English as an Additional Language support and 346 are identified as gifted and talented. All of it at no additional cost, in a not-for-profit school. Inspectors named the provision for students of determination a best feature and recorded that parents regard it very highly; parents themselves have described it as life-changing. JESS Jumeirah’s published admissions position is equally clear: students are not refused admission based only on their experience of SEND. Two honest notes are published too - admissions are extremely competitive with waiting lists closed for most year groups, and Jumeirah is primary-only, so the secondary move needs planning from the start. And the number that ends an argument: an IB Diploma average around 37 points, achieved while remaining proudly mixed-ability.
- Inclusion sweep, thirty-eighth tranche - both Repton campuses deepened, and a distinction worth stating plainly. Repton Dubai: 200 students of determination with an in-house team working alongside third-party therapists on site, inspectors recording that teachers’ understanding of differentiation has strengthened through workshops led by senior leaders and that lesson plans now incorporate it, all staff trained in mental health first aid - published with the caveat that delivery is still improving and ‘consistency remains a challenge’. Repton Al Barsha: 140 students with additional learning needs at 11% of the roll, detailed and accurate identification, most students of determination making better than expected progress through the Repton Achievement Base - published with two limits, that alternative pathways for complex needs are still being developed and that the school is growing from a few hundred pupils toward more than 1,300, which is real pressure on space and systems. And the distinction: Repton Dubai holds Outstanding overall but Very Good for inclusion. Those are not the same judgement, and for a family whose child needs support, the second one is the one that describes their child’s daily experience.
- Inclusion sweep, thirty-seventh tranche: Deira International School, and the strongest inclusion entry this register has published. Outstanding from KHDA, 246 students of determination in 2023-24, around 12% of students identified with additional needs and roughly 20% supported by the inclusion team including English language learners - with inspectors recording ‘detailed and well-informed procedures’ for identification, a clear inclusive admission policy, ‘comprehensive and highly focused support’ and ‘excellent facilities and resources providing for a wide range of needs’. Three things lift it beyond the rating: the school holds SENDIA accreditation, an external award requiring evidence submission, interviews and classroom observations rather than a self-declaration; it publishes parent guides to advocating for inclusive education in English and Arabic alongside the relevant UAE law, which is a school actively teaching families their rights; and it is Outstanding in every category of its 2025 British Schools Overseas report. Not-for-profit, non-selective, and the principal’s framing of the rating as hard-won ‘considering our fully inclusive admissions’ is the standard this register has held every selective school to since.
- Inclusion sweep, thirty-sixth tranche: The English College, deepened. Good for inclusion, just under 90 students of determination in a non-selective school long known for its inclusive environment - and structured from the front end, with the admissions process identifying needs early so provision is in place from day one, tailored strategies for students of determination, English language learners and more able pupils, and a More Able and Talented programme identified through CAT scores and teacher referrals, led jointly by a MAT Coordinator and the Head of Inclusion. Published with two inspector requests: involve parents of students of determination more closely in transitions between year groups and phases, and give all phase leaders sufficient time to monitor teaching and progress rigorously. Also banked for the coverage sprint, not published: The Elite English School’s verified findings - 116 students of determination on its SEN roll in October 2023, with inspectors recording that identification is accurate but ‘support remains uneven’. That school is not yet in this register.
- Inclusion sweep, thirty-fifth tranche: Horizon International School, where the provision worth naming is a route rather than a rating. Just under 90 students of determination registered at the last inspection, with the school adopting a Quality First Teaching approach in line with the Dubai Inclusive Education Policy Framework - and delivering the UK-based ASDAN programme one to one through its Achievement Centre as an alternative pathway for students who cannot access a full IGCSE curriculum. That is a genuine qualification route rather than a holding position, and it is the thing to ask about specifically if a full examination programme is unlikely to suit your child. A Gifted and Talented Programme runs alongside, and the school holds an Outstanding British Schools Overseas rating across all inspection categories. Published with the inspectors’ caveat: higher-ability students are not always challenged to work independently, and feedback on the quality of students’ work is inconsistent across the school.
- Inclusion sweep, thirty-fourth tranche: Kings’ School Nad Al Sheba, deepened - Outstanding for provision and outcomes, with around 130 students of determination, up sharply from 90 the previous year, supported by the LInK team of NASENCo-qualified SENCOs, speech and language therapists, dyslexia intervention specialists, autism communication specialists, EAL teachers and in-class assistants, including examination access arrangements such as scribes. Gifted students are supported alongside, with scholarships in sport, art, music, performing arts and academics. The scale context is published too: around 1,105 students here against more than 3,100 at Kings’ Al Barsha, with roughly half the roll Emirati. Also banked for the coverage sprint, not published: Dubai Carmel School’s verified inclusion findings - identification criteria effective and parents involved, but not all staff providing effective support in lessons, modifications not always aligned to developmental stages and specialist pathways limited. That school is not yet in this register, so nothing appears on the site until it is.
- Inclusion sweep, thirty-third tranche: GEMS Winchester School Dubai, where the admissions policy is the story. Inspectors named improved provision for students of determination in overcoming barriers to learning, alongside the care given to all students - and the school publishes three commitments a family can hold it to: students are not refused admission based only on their experience of a special educational need or disability, admission is not conditional on submitting a medical diagnosis, and sibling priority is given to students who experience SEND. Where it may rarely not be in a child’s best interests to be placed there, staff follow KHDA procedures and the decision is shared with the regulator. Not requiring a medical diagnosis to apply is a genuinely low barrier, and families who have been asked for paperwork elsewhere should know it is not universal. The page also carries a warning this register has issued before: this is the Dubailand school, not The Winchester School in Jebel Ali. Two different schools, similar names, different ratings.
- Inclusion sweep, thirty-second tranche. Dubai Gem Private School: Good, just over 105 students of determination, with inspectors recording that leaders and governors promote an inclusive ethos reflected in many features of school life, a recently appointed head of inclusion implementing policy, individual education plans for the most significant needs, and targeted support ensuring students of determination take part in all learning activities - with personal and social skills developed notably in art lessons, personal development rated Outstanding across all four phases, and a ratio of roughly 1:12. Pristine Private School, deepened: Very Good for inclusion and wellbeing, with a named team of the Principal, Head of Inclusion, support teachers and learning support assistants, the Wellbeing Award for Schools held to 2026 and five guidance counsellors - published with two inspector caveats, that curriculum adaptation within lessons is not yet consistently secure, and that the inclusion team was asked to monitor whether teacher training is actually improving the progress of students of determination. That second one is the question every school should be asked: not whether training happened, but whether it changed anything.
- Inclusion sweep, thirty-first tranche, and two schools proving that inclusion is not a function of price. Amity School Dubai: Good, 78 students of determination on a push-in and pull-out model led by a Head of Inclusion, with five gifted and talented students and eleven receiving English language support - and two published commitments a family should hold the school to, that it charges no additional fees for SEND provision and that it will not refuse a place to a child with SEND, offering priority admission to siblings of students with SEN requirements. Sibling priority for families with additional needs is rare enough in this market to be worth naming. Apple International School: 164 students of determination on an ASDAN-accredited skills pathway with parallel gifted provision, an inclusion team using a graduated approach to interventions, and assessment rated Very Good across all phases - in a school of nearly 5,000 students charging from roughly AED 6,832 at FS1, which places that provision at the very bottom of Dubai’s fee range.
- Inclusion sweep, thirtieth tranche. Ambassador School: Very Good for overall, wellbeing and inclusion, having climbed Acceptable to Good to Very Good and held that ground - with KHDA recording robust identification systems and the large majority of students of determination making very good progress, 162 students of determination supported by 38 teaching assistants alongside 113 teachers at a 1:9 ratio, and external recognition including a GESS Award for best initiative for inclusion and wellbeing. A school that foregrounds inclusion publicly rather than burying it is telling you something real. GEMS Al Barsha National School: serving Emirati families with bilingual early years, Islamic values and Emirati heritage as stated priorities - published with the honest context that it has been rated Acceptable at every inspection since 2019-20, that frequent leadership changes have slowed improvement despite substantial investment and modern facilities, and that inspectors found a small minority of Secondary boys not consistently meeting behaviour expectations. No separate inclusion rating was found in our verified sources, and the page says so.
- Inclusion sweep, twenty-ninth tranche, and one entry deliberately marked as unverified. GEMS Founders Al Mizhar: a dedicated programme for students of determination inside a 3,146-student school, most of them Emirati, with 232 teachers and 53 teaching assistants - published with the honest ratio of roughly 1:17, which is the trade-off that keeps fees between AED 24,877 and 37,856, and with the note that inspectors recorded broad improvement in 2023-24 even though the overall rating held at Good. GEMS Founders Dubai South, corrected: its first KHDA inspection is not due until its third year of operation in 2026-27, and its voluntary British Schools Overseas inspection in May 2025 awarded Good, with exceptionally positive parental sentiment around inclusion - and its KHDA-approved discounted fees run for the first three years only, so confirm in writing what happens after. And GEMS Legacy School, where we found the school’s own stated commitment to welcoming students of determination but no separate regulator inclusion judgement in our verified sources. The page says exactly that, and tells families to test the commitment on a visit rather than treat it as an independent finding.
- Inclusion sweep, twenty-eighth tranche, and the clearest counter-example in this entire dataset to the idea that inclusion costs a school its results. Dubai English Speaking College: Outstanding for inclusion, 208 students of determination, a fully non-selective admissions policy with no academic entry criteria, not-for-profit, Outstanding continuously since 2012-13 - and in 2025, 60% of GCSE students achieved grades 7 to 9 while 45% of A Level students achieved A or A*, with a value-added residual of +1.14. Those results were produced across a cohort the school did not select. Dubai English Speaking School: Outstanding, 64 students of determination, with a named team of a Head of Inclusion, inclusion teachers, learning support assistants and a student advisor, and teacher turnover around 10% against a UAE average nearer 20 to 22%, which means the adults who know a child tend to stay. Published with two fit notes: Arabic attainment is only Acceptable, and it is primary-only, so Year 7 entry needs arranging separately.
- Inclusion sweep, twenty-seventh tranche: Nord Anglia International School Dubai, deepened. Outstanding for both inclusion and wellbeing, with 320 students of determination at approximately 11% of the roll supported by an inclusion team of some twenty staff plus external specialists, English-language provision and extension work for gifted students - and inspectors recording that ‘high-quality support ensures that students of determination flourish’, describing the provision as exemplary. The structural fact published alongside it is the one that gives the rating meaning: this school was established as selective and is now described as wholly inclusive following KHDA’s policy, while children are still assessed before joining. A school can be genuinely excellent at supporting the children it admits and still operate an assessment gate at the door. Both facts belong to the same school and both belong on the same page.
- Inclusion sweep, twenty-sixth tranche, including a correction to our own wording. Star International Mirdif: Good, 46 students of determination, with parents of those children reporting they feel welcomed and actively involved in compiling individual education plans - and an admissions process where every application involving a student of determination is handled by the inclusion team under the school’s Inclusion Champion, with the school reserving the right to issue a ‘conditional acceptance’. Ask what conditions attach, in writing. Cambridge International School: Very Good for both inclusion and wellbeing, above its Good overall rating, with provision split into separate named departments for Exceptional Learners, Students of Determination, and Emirati and English Language Learners rather than one catch-all team. And Regent International School: our earlier entry said only that inspectors recommended strengthening inclusive provision. That was incomplete - the same report also named the inclusion department’s support for students of determination among the school’s strengths. Both findings are true and both now appear. Publishing half a report is a way of misleading with accurate facts, and we would rather correct it than leave it.
- Inclusion sweep, twenty-fifth tranche. GEMS Wellington International: Outstanding for both inclusion and wellbeing, close to 180 students with SEND requirements in a school of over 2,900, running a graduated Wave 1 to Wave 3 framework in which Wave 3 triggers an individual education plan and specialist input, across the twelve SEND categories KHDA recognises - with a named team including a Governor for Inclusive Education, Directors of Inclusion and SENDCos by year band, an autism spectrum specialist and inclusion language development specialists. The school is also non-selective, which means its academic results measure what it adds rather than who it admits. JSS International: Very Good and improved, 149 students of determination among 2,996, with an inclusion team called ‘Ikigai’ that includes the Principal, Head of Inclusion, a designated Inclusion Governor, a teacher - and a parent. A governance structure that seats a parent inside the inclusion team rather than outside it is rare enough to be worth naming.
- Inclusion sweep, twenty-fourth tranche, and one entry that reads as a warning rather than a recommendation - which is exactly what this dataset is for. The Millennium School: 155 students of determination in a school of over 2,700, with 155 teachers and 28 teaching assistants - published alongside the finding that support for students of determination, while present, is inconsistently delivered, and that teaching quality in the Primary and Middle phases falls short of the standard achieved in Kindergarten and Secondary. A family needing intensive SEN support should weigh that against the school’s real strengths elsewhere rather than assume a Very Good overall rating covers it. GEMS Our Own Indian School: Very Good, with around 9% of students identified with SEND requirements and inspectors finding that ‘inclusion is a key principle for leaders, staff, and students’ - and a detail worth crediting, that Grade 11 students stay back in the afternoon to coach and mentor younger students who need help, which makes inclusion part of the culture rather than a department.
- Inclusion sweep, twenty-third tranche - the value-tier Indian schools, where the inclusion machinery is often better than the fee level suggests. Springdales School: Very Good, 115 students on the SEND register, the ASDAN qualification pathway running alongside mainstream CBSE, and inspectors highlighting ‘the inclusion centre with its dedicated team of qualified specialist educators who bring out the best in students of determination’ - delivered through the SAWA department and a named Inclusion Support Team that includes the Principal, Inclusion Lead, Inclusion Coordinator, section leads, special educators and both parent and teacher inclusion champions. Published with the counterweight: gifted and talented provision is described by inspectors as variable, with challenge for high achievers inconsistent. Credence High School: Very Good, over 115 students of determination, with the school stating that students with SEND requirements have the same right to admission, participation and equity as any other - and the honest qualifier it attaches, that it supports them where the provision is available to do so.
- Inclusion sweep, twenty-second tranche: Jumeira Baccalaureate School, and a trade-off this register thinks families should see stated openly. Inclusion is embedded in the school’s mission statements, with policies that support students with complex needs and a curriculum inspectors judged Outstanding in most areas for meeting the needs of almost all students including students of determination. The structural fact behind it is that the school is genuinely non-selective, and its operator led the drive to inclusive education in Dubai. The published consequence: a non-selective intake will not produce the highest average Diploma scores, and the school runs the full IB continuum including the Career-related Programme precisely so students across the ability range have a route through. A school that admits everyone and a school that posts the highest averages are measuring different things, and a family should judge on whether their own child would be supported rather than on a cohort mean.
- Inclusion sweep, twenty-first tranche. Emirates International School Jumeirah: Very Good, 120 students of determination, with inspectors recording strong systems for identifying both students of determination and those with particular gifts and talents, and ‘thoughtfully constructed individual plans’ guiding curriculum adaptations - supported by an inclusion department, an in-house sensory room and specialist English-language provision. Greenfield International School: Very Good, with KHDA praising inclusive education practices alongside wellbeing, tailored support for a substantial cohort, and a ratio of roughly 1:13 to 1:14 across 106 teachers and 35 teaching assistants - published with the inspectors’ two precise development points, that all teachers must use assessment information to deliver lessons meeting the needs of every ability group including students of determination, and that leadership capacity must grow to match the school’s changing demographics. Ninety-four schools now carry a verified inclusion entry.
- Inclusion sweep, twentieth tranche. Dubai International Academy Al Barsha: Very Good, improved from Good, with a SEN register that grew from 124 students at its first inspection in 2022 to 146 two years later, a Head of Inclusion running separate Primary and Secondary teams across support Levels 1 to 3, and English-language learners supported both in class and online - with the fee position stated explicitly, that in-class and pull-out support is free while one-to-one support is funded by parents. Repton Al Barsha: Very Good, with inspectors recording detailed and accurate identification, purposeful interventions and most students of determination making better than expected progress through the Repton Achievement Base - published with the limit that matters, that alternative pathways for students with complex needs are still being developed. That is the twentieth tranche of this sweep, and the same three questions have now proven decisive at almost every school: what does the team actually consist of, which tier of support is charged for, and what does the school not yet do.
- Inclusion sweep, nineteenth tranche - the Metropole schools, and the most completely itemised inclusion team in this register. GEMS Metropole Motor City: Very Good across three consecutive cycles with close to 500 students on the SEN register, supported by a Head of Inclusion, two SENCOs, three counsellors, eight specialist teachers, three English-as-additional-language specialists, a gifted and talented coordinator, a careers counsellor, a speech and language therapist, a school psychologist, an occupational therapist - and Lotus, the school’s emotional support animal. That is what a fully staffed inclusion department actually looks like written out, and most schools never publish it. GEMS Metropole Al Waha: Good on its first inspection in February 2026, with inclusive admissions, personalised education plans built by specialist staff and external professionals, and most students of determination making gains - published with the inspectors’ finding that challenge, questioning and support need greater consistency across classrooms, which in plain terms means provision can depend on which teacher a child gets.
- Inclusion sweep, eighteenth tranche: Royal Grammar School Guildford Dubai - KHDA inspectors identified wellbeing and inclusion as areas of strength, with an inclusion team and SENCO working within Dubai’s Inclusive Education Policy Framework, and personal development rated Outstanding across all three phases. The structural support behind it: 118 teachers to 1,246 students, roughly a 10.5:1 ratio, with class sizes capped by design. Published with two honest notes - the school is still growing year by year toward Year 13, so senior provision remains unproven, and tuition excludes lunches, transport and educational trips, which belong in a family’s real budget rather than a footnote. Ninety-one schools now carry a verified inclusion entry.
- Inclusion sweep, seventeenth tranche: Victory Heights Primary School - Outstanding for inclusion by both KHDA and British Schools Overseas, with around 80 students of determination at close to 10% of the roll supported inside mainstream classrooms by specialised learning support teachers and assistants, on a 1:14 ratio with 68 teachers and 36 assistants and turnover below the Dubai average. Inspectors record meticulous identification, high-quality teaching and bespoke pathways through which students of determination make more than expected progress. One further fact belongs on this page and rarely appears anywhere: over half of students do not have English as their first language when they join, which means the English-language support here is built for scale rather than as an exception - directly relevant to any family arriving in Dubai mid-education.
- Inclusion sweep, sixteenth tranche - the Wellington academies, and a tiered fee model spelled out. GEMS Wellington Academy Al Khail: Very Good, with inspectors recording that ‘an inclusive culture is well embedded throughout the school’ and that the inclusion department is ‘extremely well led by a highly-skilled team’, supported by Directors of Inclusion, SENCOs, specialist teachers, English-language staff and counsellors, 107 teaching assistants, and GCSE, BTEC and ASDAN pathways at Key Stage 4. Its support is explicitly tiered: Level One and Two students receive classroom or small-group help at no extra cost, while Level Three students needing one-to-one learning support assistance are funded by parents. GEMS Wellington Academy Silicon Oasis is upgraded to Outstanding for inclusion, the top judgement, delivered through its Inclusion Hub and inclusion ambassadors in both phases - with its own stated boundary that intensive remedial programmes are not offered. Three tranches running, the same lesson: ask which tier your child falls into, and what that tier costs.
- Inclusion sweep, fifteenth tranche, and the clearest example yet of why the fee question matters. Arcadia British School: Outstanding inclusion through its Creative Avenues Programme, with a named team of one inclusion champion, three inclusion teachers, two counsellors and ten learning support assistants - and the school’s own stated position published in full: intermittent support is free, but where a child needs a full-time learning support assistant the school helps parents find one and the parent bears the full cost. Sunmarke School: Very Good through its Achievement Centre, covering language, maths, literacy, social and emotional mental health and functional independence, with an alternative curriculum pathway at Key Stages 3 and 4 and Post-16 routes inspectors called exemplary - and EAL and SEND support included in tuition rather than billed separately. Two schools, two honest and completely different answers to the same question. Neither is hidden on this site, and no family should discover the difference after enrolling.
- Inclusion sweep, fourteenth tranche: GEMS Jumeira Primary School - Outstanding inclusion, around 140 students of determination supported through personalised plans and early intervention, inside a school holding its eleventh consecutive Outstanding rating. Published with the practical context that actually shapes a child’s day: a 1:15 ratio, class sizes from 22 in Foundation Stage up to 27 in Years 1 to 6 - the upper end sitting at the maximum approved level, and something parents have raised in pre-inspection surveys - alongside historic staff turnover of 10 to 15%, well below the Dubai average. A school can hold the top rating and still have a class-size question worth asking, and both belong on the same page.
- Inclusion sweep, thirteenth tranche - the Cognita primaries. Horizon English School: Outstanding inclusion, 99 students of determination in a school of just over 1,100, taught by 78 teachers with 48 teaching assistants, which is unusually generous adult capacity for a primary - published with two structural fit notes rather than faults, that it is primary-only so the secondary transition needs planning from the start, and that it runs a no-homework philosophy. Ranches Primary School: Very Good, 109 students of determination at around 12% of the roll, with dedicated learning spaces, sensory and communication equipment, external speech and language and occupational therapists, and gifted learners identified through teacher observation and the school’s own assessment framework. Parent partnership at Ranches is rated Outstanding, the highest mark anywhere in its report.
- Inclusion sweep, twelfth tranche - three of the value tier’s biggest inclusion providers, deepened from summary lines into checkable detail. Delhi Private School: 228 students of determination plus 272 identified with gifts and talents, a named team of a Head of Inclusion, three special educators, three counsellors and 26 support staff, a three-tier support system, assistive technology, multi-sensory teaching and the ASDAN pathway. The Winchester School: just over 400 students of determination in a 4,300-student school, with 49 teaching assistants dedicated to inclusive classrooms - published beside the 1:18 ratio and roughly 24% teacher turnover, because continuity of the adults who know your child is part of what you are buying. GEMS FirstPoint: Very Good across every Dubai focus area, with inclusive education covering students of determination, the most able and English language learners - and the inspectors’ request to strengthen support further still kept firmly in view.
- Inclusion sweep, eleventh tranche - the IB continuum schools, and an admissions mechanism families should understand. Raffles World Academy: Very Good, with inspectors recording that strong governance and leadership promote high-quality inclusive provision, an Enrichment Club run by the Inclusion Support Team, and staff mentoring for highly able secondary students. Its published admissions process is unusually explicit and worth knowing: the final decision is taken jointly by the Principal and the Leader of Provision for Inclusion, who assess whether the school can meet a child’s needs and may offer a full place, a partial place in partnership with a specialist provider, or none - and siblings of students of determination get admissions priority. GEMS World Academy: Very Good, close to 200 students of determination, push-in and pull-out support with bespoke plans, and standard learning support at Levels 1 to 3 included in tuition - published with inspectors’ caveats that differentiation is not consistently applied across lessons and that monitoring of curriculum adaptation plans is still emerging. Uptown International School’s entry is upgraded: Outstanding for both provision and outcomes, around 140 students of determination.
- Inclusion sweep, tenth tranche: Swiss International Scientific School’s entry deepened with the detail that makes it checkable - inspectors recording that ‘thorough procedures ensure the rapid initial identification of students of determination and those with gifts and talents’, provision effectively modified to personal needs, the UK ASDAN programme running as a life-skills route alongside academic study, the Inclusion Quality Mark’s International Inclusive School award, and around 70 teaching assistants on a 1:10 ratio - published with the inspectors’ caveat that learning support assistants’ roles could be strengthened further. Also recorded for accuracy: SISD was acquired by Nord Anglia Education in 2023 and its long-serving principal leaves at the end of 2025-26, with a successor awaiting KHDA approval. Leadership and ownership changes belong on a school page, because a rating is earned by people and people move.
- Inclusion sweep, ninth tranche: Safa British School - inclusion judged Outstanding by both KHDA and British Schools Overseas, with secure identification systems, targeted interventions, tiered SEND support and a Bridge Learning Centre for complex needs, and pupils with SEND and with English as an additional language making progress in line with their peers. Both wellbeing and inclusion sit at Outstanding while the school’s overall rating is Very Good - which is itself a meaningful signal about where this school puts its effort. Kings’ School Al Barsha’s entry has also been deepened with the full LInK detail: over 259 students of determination with access to specialist SEN coordinators, speech and language therapists, dyslexia intervention specialists and autism communication specialists, in what inspectors call ‘an exceptionally inclusive learning community’. A pattern worth stating as this sweep passes the halfway mark: several of the strongest inclusion providers in Dubai are not the schools with the highest overall ratings, and a family whose child needs support should be reading the inclusion column first.
- Inclusion sweep, eighth tranche, and a new section that may save families a great deal of money. Hartland International: inclusion named a significant strength by both KHDA and British Schools Overseas inspectors, 84 registered students of determination plus support for children without a formal diagnosis, fifteen fully qualified inclusion teachers covering SEND, English as an additional language and gifted provision - with no additional cost to parents for that in-house team. Dubai Heights Academy: built as a model for inclusion since opening in 2017, with an Enrichment Zone containing a Snoezelen room, sensory room and therapy classrooms, a speech and language therapist and an occupational therapist on site twice weekly, physiotherapy available, Outstanding wellbeing, and a 1:9 ratio with a teaching assistant in every class. The key-findings page now also sets out what should be free and what is commonly charged for: individual education plans, in-class support and access to the school’s inclusion team should not cost extra, while shadow teaching, external therapy and specialist assessments usually do. Five schools in this register charge nothing for in-house learning support; at least one contracts enhanced provision separately. Know which you are signing, in writing, before you pay a deposit.
- Inclusion sweep, seventh tranche - and a finding that ought to end an argument. JESS Arabian Ranches: Outstanding inclusion, 224 students of determination supported through the Oasis Centre and an Essential Pathways curriculum, with inspectors naming that provision a best feature of the school - and an IB Diploma average around 37 points achieved while remaining proudly mixed-ability. Top outcomes and genuine inclusion are demonstrably not a trade-off, and this register now has the numbers to say so. As at JESS Jumeirah, no additional fee is charged for learning support. Dubai British School Jumeirah Park: Outstanding for inclusion as well as overall - one of only eighteen schools in Dubai to hold both in 2023-24 - with around 11% of students identified, recorded as ‘fully included in all aspects of school life’, and ASDAN and BTEC pathways offering real alternative routes. Jebel Ali School: Very Good, with clear policies and trained adults producing practical classroom adjustments rather than words on a page. Eighty-seven schools now carry an inclusion entry.
- Inclusion sweep, sixth tranche - two entries where the caveat is the useful part. GEMS Our Own English High School: Very Good, with inspectors recording that the school ‘is highly inclusive and welcomes students of all abilities’, comprehensive identification systems for students of determination and for gifted learners, and an inclusion governor holding a well-developed vision - published with the regulator’s own qualifier that ‘the implementation of the modified curriculum for all students of determination is variable’. GEMS Wellington Academy Silicon Oasis: a personalised model with an Inclusion Hub, inclusion ambassadors across both phases, and individual education plans informed by educational psychologist, speech and language and occupational therapy reports - published with the school’s own stated boundary, that English language support runs for Years 2 to 9 and intensive remedial programmes are not offered. A school telling you plainly what it does not do is more useful than a school implying it does everything, and this register will print both.
- Inclusion sweep, fifth tranche - the GEMS schools, and the largest inclusion cohort in this register. GEMS Founders Dubai supports 860 students of determination inside a school of more than 6,000, non-selective by policy, with a qualified team of SEN specialists and learning support assistants, and inspectors crediting investment in buildings, staffing and resources as evidence of intent. On volume alone at mid-market fees that is one of the strongest inclusion propositions in the emirate - and the page still asks the only question that converts volume into quality: what is the ratio of specialists to those 860 students. GEMS Royal Dubai: Outstanding inclusion with around 12% of students identified, alongside Outstanding parent partnership and inspectors recording that parents are ‘enabled to be true partners’ - published with the honest qualifier that the school’s stated focus is mild SEND requirements, so families with needs beyond that range should ask directly. And GEMS Founders Dubai South, which has no KHDA judgement at all, carries instead its British Schools Overseas finding of a fully inclusive ethos and exceptional SEND progress, clearly labelled as a second inspectorate rather than the regulator.
- Inclusion sweep, fourth tranche - and a piece of information that may matter more than any single school entry. Dubai College: Very Good for inclusion, 90 students of determination at just over 8% of the roll, with high-quality identification procedures, individual education plans built around classroom accommodations, students themselves involved in adapting their own support, and better than expected progress - published with the inspectors’ note of some inconsistency in how teachers implement those plans, the report’s own observation that the college is very open about its academic selection policy, and the request to enhance strategic leadership of wellbeing and inclusion. Alongside it, the key-findings page now carries something no school brochure will tell a family: under KHDA’s directives a Dubai school may not refuse a child simply because of a disability, refusal without exceptional grounds is monitored and can trigger regulatory action, and every private school must run an inclusion support team led by a named inclusion champion. A parent who is told no is entitled to ask which exceptional grounds apply, and who that champion is.
- Inclusion sweep, third tranche - and the awkward question this register will keep asking. North London Collegiate School Dubai: 53 students of determination, with inspectors naming ‘the expertise, vision, determination and leadership of the inclusion department’ among the best features of the school. Brighton College Dubai: governors formally asked to adapt admission and inclusion policies to reflect their stated vision for a fully inclusive school. Both schools are academically selective, testing children before offering a place, and both pages say so directly next to their inclusion entry, because a strong inclusion department and a selective admissions gate are two different things and a family needs to understand both. The question we tell parents to ask is the same one Deira International’s principal invited when framing that school’s Outstanding rating as hard-won ‘considering our fully inclusive admissions’: how does selection actually work for a child with identified needs?
- Inclusion sweep, second tranche: GEMS Modern Academy - Outstanding for inclusion, with around 300 students of determination and gifted learners supported by the SEN team, an inclusion governor working actively with the department, and independent learning plans used by teachers to design lessons around individual needs. Two caveats are published with it, both from the school’s own inspection record: not every identified student joins the support programme, which the report attributes to parental reluctance, and inspectors asked the school to ensure inclusion staffing is sufficient for effective monitoring. An Outstanding inclusion rating does not mean there is nothing to ask about, and this register will keep saying so.
- Inclusion sweep begins - the largest gap our own audit found. Repton Dubai: Very Good, around 200 students of determination supported by an in-house team working with third-party therapists on site, published with the inspectors’ caveat that teachers’ delivery of differentiated activities is improving ‘although consistency remains a challenge’. Repton Al Barsha: Very Good, provision for special educational needs and for the more able run through a single named structure, the Repton Achievement Base. Kings’ School Dubai: Outstanding, 92 students of determination, with inspectors recording excellent systems for swift and accurate identification, a sensory room on site and occupational therapy from an external specialist. Jumeirah College: Outstanding for inclusion and wellbeing alongside its Outstanding overall rating - all three at the top, which few schools manage. The key-findings page now also carries the sector scale to judge these against: 24 schools Outstanding for inclusive education, 48 Very Good, 75 Good and 45 Acceptable - so an Outstanding inclusion rating is rare, and an Acceptable one puts a school in the bottom quarter on the measure that matters most to a family whose child needs support.
- Brand change: the wordmark is now DubaiSchoolGuide.com. It reads as the address you type, on every one of the 271 pages, in all nine languages - a domain is a domain in any script, so the Arabic masthead carries it too, set left-to-right so it renders correctly inside a right-to-left page. ‘School’ keeps the same green it has always had. Nothing else moved: same typeface, same weight, same colours, same position. Two technical consequences worth recording, because they are real changes even if nobody notices them: the word spacing has been closed to zero so the name reads as one address rather than three words, and the wordmark scales down slightly on phones narrower than 480 pixels, because twenty characters that cannot break mid-word need the room. The legal and editorial name in our footer, page titles and structured data remains DubaiSchoolGuide.com.
- Independent audit, and the fixes it forced - published in full because an audit you do not publish is marketing. Fourteen defects were found by running machine checks against the built site. Twelve were fixed the same day: a skip-to-content link for keyboard and screen-reader users; accessible names added to every form control that lacked one; minimum 44-pixel tap targets on buttons; horizontal scrolling for the three pages carrying wide tables; a no-JavaScript fallback on the map page; 257 page titles and 141 descriptions shortened so search engines stop truncating them; and three school pages that showed strengths without an improvement list now say plainly that the gap is in our sourcing, not evidence that inspectors raised none. Two findings were left open at the time with reasons given - both are now closed. The gold and light-green rating tags measured 4.25 and 4.31 against the WCAG AA threshold of 4.5, so the tag ink has been darkened very slightly - every chip colour, shape, weight and size is unchanged - and all six rating tags now measure 4.65 or better. And an Organization identity node with publisher attribution has been added, with each school’s structured data extended to carry its curriculum, founding year and published fee range. One more thing belongs here: our own audit script reported that FAQ structured data was missing. It was not - the script failed to look inside schema graph wrappers. The tool was wrong, the site was right, and we are recording that with the same weight as the real faults.
- The inspection sprint is complete. All 169 schools in this register now carry a ‘what the inspectors said’ section - strengths and required improvements published together, dated to the cycle they came from, or, for schools never inspected, an honest page that says so and separates what is known from what is not yet proven. The final two: Dubai Modern Education School, a dual-track US and Ministry of Education school where the published record shows teaching improved to good in Kindergarten and the MoE section but recorded as weak in the elementary and middle phases of the US section - the single most important thing a parent of a child in those years could know. And Emirates National Schools Dubai, where the published record is among the thinnest anywhere in this register: rather than manufacture plausible detail, the page states that plainly and gives families the exact questions to ask instead. That principle has governed all one hundred and seven tranches: found in the record, or not published at all.
- Inspection sprint, tranche one hundred and six: St Mary’s High School Muhaisnah - consistently strong English, mathematics and science with excellent IGCSE results, external benchmarks reported Very Good to Outstanding across both phases, exemplary personal development in the inspectors’ own words, Good wellbeing with students reporting that they feel safe and listened to, and strong Arabic as a first language, which reverses the usual pattern here. Published beside it: low Arabic as a second language attainment, and inspectors’ call for sharper focus in Islamic Education, Foundation Stage development and inclusion practices - which we state plainly, because a family whose child needs structured support should ask what has changed and who leads it. And H.H. Sheikh Rashid Pakistani School: one of only two Pakistani-curriculum schools inspected in Dubai, now at Acceptable after Weak ratings in earlier cycles. Its published record is thinner than almost any school in this register, and rather than manufacture detail we cannot verify, the page says so and tells families exactly which questions to ask on a visit. One hundred and sixty-seven schools now carry sections; two remain.
- Inspection sprint, tranche one hundred and five - the Creative Science schools. International School of Creative Science Nad Al Sheba: Good at every inspection since 2018-19, with Outstanding health and safety and Outstanding parents and community across all phases and Very Good wellbeing - three judgements above its overall rating - blending the UK curriculum with a Quran memorisation programme and a Virtues character curriculum, published beside class sizes of 28 in Primary and Secondary and the fact that girls and boys are taught separately from Year 5. And American School of Creative Science: Good in February 2024, confirming the 2023 breakthrough that allowed its growth to Grade 12, after three consecutive Acceptable cycles - published with the instruction to confirm exactly which campus a child will attend, since the school shared a site with its sister school pending a move. One hundred and sixty-five schools now carry sections; four remain.
- Inspection sprint, tranche one hundred and four - and the register’s most recent inspection yet. GEMS Metropole Al Waha was inspected for the first time in February 2026 and rated Good, dated to the 2025-26 cycle: inspectors found strong systems, clear vision and positive outcomes, with most improvement areas concerning consistency rather than fundamental weakness - published alongside the finding that matters most to SEN families, that challenge, questioning and support for students of determination need greater consistency across classrooms, which means provision that depends on which teacher a child has. Also encoded: Lycée Français Jean Mermoz South, opened on Hessa Street in 2024-25 and extended to all secondary levels in 2025, and Lycée Français International Mudon, a branch of Outstanding-rated LFI Oud Metha currently in temporary accommodation until its purpose-built campus opens - both unrated, both with the borrowed-reputation warning stated plainly. One hundred and sixty-three schools now carry sections.
- Inspection sprint, tranche one hundred and three - the two newest Dubai British School campuses, both unrated. DBS Jumeira, opened August 2024 in Al Wasl, has already added Years 7 and 8 and is growing toward Year 13; DBS Mira opened August 2025 in Emaar’s Mira community with a 25-metre competition pool and specialist arts studios, led by a founding principal from DBS Jumeirah Park and a head of primary from The Arbor School - leadership drawn from inside the group, which this register treats as a more meaningful signal than branding. Both pages state that the Outstanding ratings belong to Emirates Hills and Jumeirah Park and are not transferable, that Year 9 at Mira opens only in 2027-28 so the all-through pathway is a plan rather than a provision, and that families needing highly specialised SEND provision should ask exactly what a developing inclusion team can deliver - and get it in writing. Also recorded: the group’s standing charges, including a AED 4,000 registration fee, belong in a first-year budget. One hundred and sixty schools now carry sections.
- Inspection sprint, tranche one hundred and two - three sister campuses opened in 2024 and 2025, and one principle stated on every page: a sister school’s rating is not this school’s rating. GEMS Founders Dubai South, whose Al Barsha South original holds Very Good from KHDA and Outstanding from British Schools Overseas, is itself unrated and still opening Years 10 and 12 in 2026. DESS Primary Academic City carries a name attached to two Outstanding schools and has no judgement of its own. Victory Heights Primary City of Arabia is led by the original school’s former deputy head - continuity of practice rather than a brand licence, which we note as the more meaningful signal - and is still unrated. All three pages ask the same practical questions: which senior staff actually transferred, what the fee-discount reversion terms are in writing, and how a primary-only school plans the Year 6 move. One hundred and fifty-eight schools now carry sections.
- Inspection sprint, tranche one hundred and one - three schools with no inspection record, written honestly rather than hopefully. Queen Elizabeth’s School Dubai, the first overseas campus of one of the UK’s highest-performing schools, opens August 2026 in Dubai Sports City: visitors describe a clear sense of purpose already in place, and this register still records that nothing has been independently assessed and asks the question the brand invites - how selective will this campus be, and what happens to a child who finds the pace hard. The Scholars School opens in Al Quoz 1 with founding fees from around AED 42,700 against standard rates of AED 61,000 to 85,000, published with the advice to get in writing what that discount covers and for how long. And New Dawn Private School, open since August 2024, growing year by year, with its late launch, its not-yet-operational secondary pathway and its undisclosed ownership structure all stated plainly. One hundred and fifty-five schools now carry sections.
- Inspection sprint, tranche one hundred - the French sector completed. Bilingual French International School: Very Good in 2023-24 after a decade of volatility - Acceptable, Good, back to Acceptable, then two Goods before this breakthrough - and the only school in Dubai offering Advanced Placement, the IB Certificate, the bilingual French-English IB Diploma and a bilingual French Baccalaureate with an American pathway, published beside the plain fact that its senior grades have only just opened and carry no examination track record. And Lycée Libanais Francophone Privé: Very Good at its new Meydan campus, governance and parent partnership Outstanding, Outstanding French, mathematics and science in Maternelle, with inspectors quoting a coherent vision incorporating wellbeing and student-centred learning.
- Two schools that have never been inspected now have honest pages. Rugby School Dubai and Harrow International School Dubai both open for 2026-27, so their sections carry a different header: no rating, no inspection findings, and a clear split between what is known and committed and what is not yet proven. Rugby opens FS1 to Year 13 at once on the Nad Al Sheba site Kent College vacates in 2026, with founding fees from around AED 70,000; Harrow opens on a 50,000 square metre Hessa Street campus capped at 2,000 students, with obligatory meal charges of roughly AED 6,650 to 13,440 a year on top of super-premium tuition. Both state plainly that a full inspection normally comes only in a school’s third year. Also corrected: this guide had stated that inspections resume in 2026-27. Sources now conflict, some reporting the pause extended through that year, so the key-findings page records the disagreement rather than picking the convenient answer.
- Correction, published in full: four inspection strengths encoded in tranche one under GEMS Our Own English High School were in fact drawn from the report page of GEMS Our Own Indian School in Al Quoz - two different schools in the same family. The findings have been moved to the school they belong to, and GEMS Our Own English High School has been rewritten from its own verified record: Very Good for a seventh consecutive inspection, Secondary achievement now Outstanding in English, mathematics and science, personal development and innovation Outstanding school-wide, about 7% teacher turnover - with the scale trade-offs stated. We would rather publish our own mistakes than let a family act on one.
- Inspection sprint, tranche ninety-eight: Vernus International Primary School - a small Silicon Oasis school whose strengths are real and specific: personal and social development Very Good in Kindergarten, health and safety Very Good in both phases, good English progress, curriculum design Good, and a 1:7 student-to-teacher ratio against a Dubai average nearer 1:13.6. Published with equal weight: Acceptable in both inspections, weak Islamic Education and Arabic first-language attainment in Elementary, leadership effectiveness Acceptable with self-evaluation not entirely accurate, enrolment down from just over 330 students to 238 between inspections - and the finding every parent should carry into a meeting, that the school’s internal assessment data often overestimates achievement against external benchmarks. With inspections paused, this report stands as the definitive public assessment until 2026-27. One hundred and forty-eight written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche ninety-seven - the Dubai Schools public-private partnership and a new British entrant. Dubai Schools Al Barsha: Acceptable on its first inspection, with wellbeing rated Good above the overall grade, UK-recruited teachers, an assistant in every class from KG to Grade 3, and NEASC and TASS accreditation - published beside the plain academic gap in Elementary and Middle English, mathematics and science. Dubai Schools Al Khawaneej: over 95% Emirati enrolment, all-inclusive fees covering transport, uniform and activities, and a published subsidy calculator for UAE national families - published with an Acceptable wellbeing rating in which parents and students have only basic means of raising issues, and the fact that its inspection predates the move from Mirdif to the current campus. And PACE Modern British School: Acceptable on debut, with the staffing model stated plainly - UK-qualified leaders developing teachers recruited from lower-cost markets, and one counsellor for the whole school. One hundred and forty-seven written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche ninety-six - both Dubai International Private School campuses. Al Quoz: Good, with an inclusive ethos and strong parental engagement recognised by inspectors, Arabic as an additional language rated Good - unusual in this market - NEASC and Cognia accreditation, and accessible fees for a full American pathway to Grade 12. Garhoud: good improvement in English and science across all phases, Elementary mathematics lifted from weak to acceptable, top-ten in Dubai for Emirati achievement in TIMSS 2023 - published beside the inspectors’ instructions: develop measurable targets with timeframes, reconfigure the High School to an accredited American model, align teaching to curriculum standards, and ensure all teachers are aware of the needs of students of determination and support them effectively, which is the regulator’s way of recording that not all did. One hundred and forty-four written summaries live; seventy inclusion entries.
- Inspection sprint, tranche ninety-five - including the register’s first documented downgrade. North American International School was rated Good in 2019-20 and again in 2022-23, then Acceptable in November 2023, with inspectors specific about the cause: in Middle and High school, expectations are often too low and learning activities insufficiently challenging. That is a decline rather than a plateau, it sits against mid-range American-curriculum fees, and it carries extra weight for the Emirati families who make up the largest group in the school. Alongside it, Al Sadiq Islamic English School: Acceptable in thirteen of fourteen inspections, with Secondary English, mathematics, science and Islamic Education all Good, parent partnership Very Good, wellbeing Good, and fees among the most accessible anywhere in this register - published with the plain note that achievement outside Secondary is Acceptable throughout and the school runs only to Year 11. One hundred and forty-two written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche ninety-four - two schools that exist to serve one community each, and are irreplaceable to it. The Japanese School Dubai: Good in all fourteen inspection years since 2008, a 1:6 ratio among the most generous in the emirate, and the only Japanese national curriculum in Dubai - published beside inspectors’ mixed picture, including compliance issues with UAE Ministry requirements, governance concerns arising from the transitory nature of rotating appointees, and flagged resources and facilities. The Philippine School Dubai: Acceptable for a fourth consecutive cycle, a genuine recovery from three straight Weak years between 2016 and 2019, with Filipino rated Good across all four phases, personal and social development a notable strength, and fees among the lowest of any licensed private school here - published with the finding that internal data and observed standards do not match, which is a checkable thing to raise on a visit. One hundred and forty written summaries live.
- Fee corrections, published: Arab Unity School’s range is corrected to the KHDA-approved AED 6,462-10,808, which makes it the most affordable full British-curriculum school in this register by a wide margin, and Russian International School’s to AED 15,722-25,180. Both were previously listed with wider estimates; both now match published figures. Fee accuracy is not a detail on a site whose entire purpose is helping families compare what they can actually afford.
- Inspection sprint, tranche ninety-three: Arab Unity School - Acceptable for the thirteenth time, and the page says why that headline misleads in both directions: secondary and post-16 mathematics and science are Good to Very Good, health and safety Very Good across all phases, Post-16 personal development Outstanding, IGCSE begun in Year 9 to give three years of preparation - all at some of the lowest fees in this register - published beside variable Foundation Stage and Primary attainment, inconsistent checking of individual progress, and improvement plans lacking measurable goals. And Russian International School - Good for a seventh consecutive cycle, with Russian attainment Outstanding in Primary and Secondary, mathematics Outstanding in Secondary and science Very Good throughout, the only school in Dubai delivering the full Volgograd-accredited Russian curriculum - published with the Weak Secondary Arabic rating and the ratio moving from 1:9 to about 1:14 under recent demand. One hundred and thirty-eight written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche ninety-two: Greenwood International School - an eleventh consecutive Good, with personal and social development rated excellent, Very Good Kindergarten, 36 high-school electives inspectors call broad and imaginative, and a documented fix worth crediting: where the previous cycle found only a few teachers appropriately qualified, the 2023-24 report confirms all staff now are. Published beside it: didactic teaching in places, expectations for able students not always high enough, and assessment data not consistently used. And Smart Vision School - a second consecutive Good after two Acceptable cycles, with Very Good Foundation Stage progress in English and mathematics, 55 students of determination supported by a heavily staffed SEND department with speech and language therapy and a lift-equipped campus, published with the note that new ownership arrived in June 2025 and the expansion to Year 13 is still under way. One hundred and thirty-six written summaries live; sixty-eight inclusion entries.
- Register correction, published in full: this guide had The International School of Choueifat in Al Sufouh listed as Good. Multiple independent records of the 2023-24 DSIB inspection show the school rated Acceptable - a rating it has held across more than a decade - and the register has been corrected accordingly, with its fee range updated to the published AED 21,896-41,906. This is the kind of error that changes a shortlist, so it is stated here rather than quietly amended. Both Choueifat campuses now carry inspector summaries: Al Sufouh, with very good high-school mathematics and science and extensive global university placement, published beside inspectors’ findings that progress against previous recommendations was limited, parental involvement inadequate, governance lacking diverse representation and self-evaluation lacking accuracy; and DIP, where a 1:22 ratio is linked directly by inspectors to the challenge of personalised learning. One hundred and thirty-four written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche ninety: The Indian International School DSO - Good after a long run of Acceptable ratings, a 2,800-student community school that has formally adopted Dubai’s Inclusive Education Policy Framework and supports 165 students of determination at fees of roughly AED 9,700-21,000, among the most accessible anywhere in this register. Published beside it: the improvement is recent, the published grade range runs to Grade 10 so the senior-school move needs planning, and with 199 teachers to over 2,800 students the ratio question is a fair one to put on a visit. Also recorded from the same cycle’s Indian-sector table: The Indian Academy holds Good for a fourth consecutive inspection, and its verified findings are banked for the coverage sprint - that school is not yet in this register. One hundred and thirty-two written summaries live; sixty-six inclusion entries.
- Inspection sprint, tranche eighty-nine: Primus Private School - a thirteenth consecutive Good, with English, mathematics and science Very Good across almost all phases and personal development Outstanding school-wide at fees of roughly AED 12,000-24,000, published beside the staffing arithmetic that matters: 86 teachers against 108 four years ago, a ratio moved from 1:13 to about 1:17, classes averaging 27-30, and turnover at 22%. And Dhruv Global School - the register’s newest inspection, its first, conducted in February 2026 and dated as such: Acceptable on debut for a school opened in 2023, with fees charged well below the approved ceiling, positive early parent relationships, and the honest context that its campus previously housed a school which closed after about twelve months. One hundred and thirty-one written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche eighty-eight: Al Salam Community School - Good for a third consecutive cycle since opening in 2019, permitted to open right through from FS1 to Year 13 from the outset on the strength of its sister school’s record, with inspectors recording outstanding understanding of Islamic values and awareness of Emirati and world cultures across all phases. Published beside it: the long-standing teacher-turnover concern that persists in the latest inspection record, and independently gathered parent sentiment running below what that record might suggest. Also banked for the coverage sprint: Collegiate International School’s verified findings - a 1:11 ratio, NEASC and College Board accreditation, a Good inclusion verdict, and mathematics and science at Acceptable above the Elementary phase - held unpublished because that school is not yet in this register. One hundred and twenty-nine written summaries live; sixty-five inclusion entries.
- Inspection sprint, tranche eighty-seven - three schools serving large Emirati communities, where the rating carries regulatory weight as well as educational meaning. New Academy School: Good since December 2022 after three Weak cycles and five at Acceptable, with SEN provision improved to Good and 105 students identified with additional needs. School of Modern Skills: Acceptable, with Good Islamic Education across three phases and a broad California-standards curriculum, published beside Acceptable English, mathematics and science in the middle of the school. International Academic School: Acceptable across five inspections after two years rated Weak, with a strong Kindergarten and improving inclusion - published with the inspectors’ caveat that planning does not always articulate how students of determination will be meaningfully included in lessons. One hundred and twenty-eight written summaries live; sixty-four inclusion entries.
- Context build, tranche eighty-six: the official key-findings page now explains something almost no school list in this city states plainly - that a rating’s consequences differ by family. Under KHDA’s admissions rules Emirati students may not enrol in schools rated Weak or below, and the regulator has actively encouraged Emirati families to move children from Acceptable-rated schools to Good-rated alternatives, contacting parents directly; expatriate families face no formal restriction at that level. The page also sets out what Good actually means - the defined benchmark every Dubai school is expected to meet, held by 85 schools in 2023-24, and measured today against a progressively tougher framework, which is why this register treats a long run at one rating as a fact requiring interpretation rather than an automatic criticism. Safa British School’s entry was also deepened with its published National Agenda detail: a PIRLS average of 597, 69 points above target.
- Inspection sprint, tranche eighty-five: Mirdif American School - Good confirmed in October 2023, deliberately small at under 700 students with strength in parent partnership, governance, safeguarding and personal development, published beside the Arabic weakness, the open question of academic stretch, and the practical note that the school ran only to Grade 8 with Grades 9 and 10 added for 2025-26. And American Academy for Girls, formerly Al Mizhar American Academy - Good in every inspection since 2008-09 while the framework itself was toughened, with Very Good early years and elementary provision, Outstanding health and safety in every phase, Outstanding parent partnership, and a distinct position as Dubai’s only international-curriculum girls-only school from Grade 1. One hundred and twenty-five written summaries live; sixty-two inclusion entries.
- Inspection sprint, tranche eighty-four - two first-ever Good ratings, and the reason this register reads the whole market rather than the top of it. Gulf Indian High School: Good in November 2023 after thirteen consecutive inspections at Acceptable, with achievement now at least Good across English, mathematics, science and Islamic Education, close to 200 students of determination and an inclusion department inspectors call a strength, and examination results published in its annual report - transparency too few schools at any fee level bother with. New Indian Model School: Good for the first time in its history after twelve years at Acceptable, with Kindergarten ratings at Very Good and inspectors crediting a principal appointed only six months before the inspection. Both pages carry the honest counterweight: these turnarounds are one year old. One hundred and twenty-three written summaries live; sixty-one inclusion entries.
- Inspection sprint, tranche eighty-three: Kings’ School Nad Al Sheba - Very Good since 2018-19, Outstanding Foundation Stage, Outstanding by British Schools Overseas in March 2022, and an Outstanding inclusion verdict whose detail is now published in full: 128 students of determination supported by NASENCo-qualified SENCOs, speech and language therapists, dyslexia and autism specialists, EAL teachers and in-class assistants - a roll-call of provision most schools never itemise, and up sharply from 90 students the year before. Published beside it: self-evaluation documents to be made more precise, a Secondary phase still maturing with no university destination data yet, and premium fees to weigh against a Very Good rather than Outstanding rating. One hundred and twenty-one written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche eighty-two - two Acceptable-tier schools written with the same rigour as any Outstanding page. Cedar School: a small community-scale school with a well-conceived reading plan and most students reading at age-related expectations, published beside Acceptable core-subject attainment and the specific finding that the Emirati cohort’s benchmark progress was rated Weak. Oak Tree Primary: a safe, caring environment welcoming students of all abilities with genuinely improved Foundation Stage provision and middle leadership - published beside the finding that school self-evaluation and improvement planning is rated Weak, the one mechanism by which a school normally improves itself, along with weaker lower-Primary teaching, reading below chronological age in Years 4 to 6, and leadership that has changed again since the inspection. Families choosing at this level are entitled to exactly this much detail. One hundred and twenty written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche eighty-one: Dunecrest American School - three consecutive Good ratings since opening in 2018, with Kindergarten English and mathematics lifted to Very Good, Very Good personal development and care across all phases, Outstanding school management, and dual IB and Advanced Placement pathways on an eight-acre campus. Published beside it, in the inspectors’ own terms: raise achievement in all subjects and particularly in Islamic Education and Arabic, improve the consistency of teaching and the use of assessment information, wellbeing at Good rather than Very Good - and fees running to roughly AED 96,300 at the top of the school, which against a Good rating deserves a deliberate conversation about what you are buying. One hundred and eighteen written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche eighty: The School of Research Science - Good since 2018-19, with Outstanding care, guidance and support across all four phases, Outstanding health, safety and safeguarding across all phases, eighteen extensively trained guidance counsellors for 3,209 students, Outstanding facilities, and - unusually for this market - Arabic rated Outstanding as both a first and an additional language. Published beside it: teaching Very Good in Foundation Stage and Post-16 but only Good in Primary and Secondary, work not always matched to students’ needs, assessment data not consistently used to personalise learning, and the separate US High School section rated Acceptable twice with governance inspectors found wanting - a distinction we spell out, because the two sections share a name and are not the same school. One hundred and seventeen written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche seventy-nine: The Aquila School - Good across all three cycles, a report full of Very Good sub-domain judgements, and an April 2025 British Schools Overseas inspection awarding Outstanding across every area; SEN, EAL and gifted provision praised by both inspectorates, wellbeing Very Good by KHDA and outstanding for pastoral care by BSO. Published beside it: teaching consistency in Secondary, an upper-years curriculum needing broadening before the IB Sixth Form, middle-leadership capacity to develop, and Arabic attainment to raise. And Newlands School - Good for a second cycle after two at Acceptable, fully inclusive admissions, accessible fees, with the honest note that its climb is recent and its principal arrived in January 2023. One hundred and sixteen written summaries live; fifty-nine inclusion entries.
- Inspection sprint, tranche seventy-eight - both Dubai National School campuses, serving a predominantly Emirati community. Al Twar: Good, with strong Kindergarten and High School achievement, respectful behaviour, robust child protection and four counsellors, and staffing ratios rare at this fee level - roughly 1:10, average classes of 21, and 9% teacher turnover. Published beside it: teaching quality not consistently observed, and enrolment down from around 1,750 in 2018 to just over 1,250, a trend to raise with leaders directly. Al Barsha: Good, the larger 1988-established campus with 2,470 students, published with independently gathered parent sentiment that is mixed - around two-thirds would recommend it, with a meaningful minority unsure or negative. Both campuses teach boys and girls separately from Grade 4, stated as a defining feature to weigh rather than a flaw. One hundred and fourteen written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche seventy-seven - the Al Ittihad campuses, which serve one of the largest Emirati student communities in Dubai’s private sector. Al Safa: Good across eleven inspections with almost 90% Emirati enrolment, Very Good curriculum in every section but Kindergarten, High School science progress risen to Very Good, and - from the regulator’s published table - Very Good for both inclusion and wellbeing, above its overall rating. Published beside it: two downgrades this cycle in Kindergarten English progress and Middle-school Arabic attainment, and inspectors finding expectations too low in some lessons. Al Mamzar: Good since 2018-19 after years at Acceptable, with strengths in Kindergarten and High School - published with the previous cycle’s finding that benchmark progression was weak across all subjects with deficits not improving, and a principal appointed weeks before the inspection. One hundred and twelve written summaries live; fifty-seven inclusion entries.
- Inspection sprint, tranche seventy-six - the French sector, and a second harvest from KHDA’s published per-school table. Lycée Français International Georges Pompidou: Very Good for a fourth successive inspection, Outstanding English and mathematics, Outstanding teaching in Primaire and Lycée, students of determination grown from under 100 to 265 with Very Good provision, at roughly AED 36,900-50,700 - exceptional value against peers charging two to three times as much. Lycée Français Jean Mermoz: Very Good in only its third inspection, with English Outstanding across the whole school. And from the regulator’s own table, official focus-area ratings now published for Cambridge International, Fairgreen, GEMS Al Khaleej and American School of Creative Science Nad Al Sheba - each recorded Very Good for both inclusion and wellbeing, in several cases above their overall rating. One hundred and ten written summaries live; fifty-eight inclusion entries.
- Inspection sprint, tranche seventy-five: Australian International School - Good on debut, Dubai’s only Australian-curriculum school, with consistently Good core-subject achievement, teachers praised for subject knowledge and purposeful lessons, and inspectors recording that parents of students of determination are very satisfied with its support; published with the Arabic and Islamic gap, limited community involvement, and premium fees against a debut rating. And Ignite School - leadership working steadily on improvement with very good awareness of Islamic values and improved Arabic outcomes, published beside the plain reasons for its rating: Acceptable attainment in English, mathematics and science across all phases, inconsistent impact from leaders’ planning, and some older students showing unsettled behaviour. One hundred and eight written summaries live; fifty-three inclusion entries.
- Inspection sprint, tranche seventy-four: The English College - Very Good confirmed in December 2023 after eleven consecutive inspections at Good, one of the clearest transformations in this register: Outstanding in 24 individual criteria, 80% of criteria at Outstanding or Very Good, Outstanding personal development and care across all four phases, and facilities inspectors now call of the highest quality where earlier reports had called them not fit for purpose. Published beside it: Islamic Education and Arabic to be raised to match other core subjects, assessment data to become a more informative driver in Foundation Stage and Post-16, phase leaders needing time to monitor teaching rigorously, and the inspectors’ specific request that parents of students of determination be involved more closely in transitions. One hundred and six written summaries live; fifty-two inclusion entries.
- Inspection sprint, tranche seventy-three: GEMS Winchester School Dubai - Good confirmed in November 2023 after nine years at Acceptable, with a British Schools Overseas verdict of Good with Outstanding features where personal development, welfare and leadership were all judged Outstanding, and benchmark assessments improving by one to two levels in English, science and mathematics, at roughly AED 20,400-38,400. Published beside it, unsoftened: a PIRLS score 15 points short of target, Arabic attainment lower than other core subjects, and the specific published finding that Emirati students sustained a weak judgement in English. Also encoded: GEMS Al Khaleej International School, dated to its 2022-23 report, with Outstanding personal development, Islamic values and innovation skills in every phase alongside Good self-evaluation and facilities. One hundred and five written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche seventy-two: South View School - Good for a third cycle with Outstanding safeguarding school-wide, Very Good governance and Foundation Stage teaching, PIRLS reading 25 points above target and TIMSS results above Dubai, international and UK averages; published with the phase-by-phase truth that matters most to sixth-form families, that Post-16 teaching was rated only Acceptable and the school has been directed to address it, alongside evolving leadership capacity in the upper phases and a report conducted under the previous principal. And Dove Green Private School - Good for a third cycle after climbing from an Acceptable debut, with major senior-school investment, published beside the fact that enrolment slightly exceeded stated capacity at inspection and that full FS to Year 13 provision does not complete until September 2027. One hundred and three written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche seventy-one: The Arbor School - Good for three consecutive years with Outstanding personal development, curriculum quality and health and safety in the lower school, Outstanding social responsibility and innovation, and an ecological philosophy inspectors themselves singled out. It also charges below the KHDA-approved maximum at every year group, which we state because almost no school does. Published beside it: the call for more consistent practice in Secondary, the Arabic and Islamic ceiling, the fact that the inspection predates the Sixth Form so there is no inspected evidence or exam record for the senior phase, and the detail every SEN family needs - enhanced SEND provision is charged separately under its own contract. One hundred and one written summaries live; fifty-one inclusion entries.
- Inspection sprint, tranche seventy - the American-curriculum tier: American School of Dubai, where 53 of 87 individual ratings are Outstanding yet the overall judgement is Good, held down by non-compliance in Arabic and Islamic Studies plus Weak governance and Acceptable leadership effectiveness - all four facts published together, because for some families the ceiling is the story and for others the 53 Outstandings are. GEMS Dubai American Academy - Outstanding for an eleventh inspection, the only US-curriculum school in Dubai at the top, with Outstanding inclusion covering more than 320 students of determination. And Al Maaref American School - Acceptable, published with the same care: real strengths in personal development and Islamic values, and the plain reasons for the rating. Also banked for the coverage sprint: Al Salam Private School’s verified findings, including that almost 19% of its students are students of determination - among the highest proportions in the UAE - for the day that school enters the register. One hundred and one written summaries live; fifty-one inclusion entries.
- Depth pass, tranche sixty-eight: two of the register’s earliest entries deepened with verified detail. GEMS Wellington International - inspected thirteen times since 2008-09 with twelve Outstanding results, every key measure now Outstanding except Arabic and Islamic Education, and an Outstanding inclusion verdict covering close to 180 students of determination in a school of 2,900. GEMS Wellington Academy Al Khail - rated Outstanding by British Schools Overseas in February 2023, a second inspectorate reaching a verdict KHDA has not yet awarded, with the report showing a school a hair’s breadth from Outstanding overall. Early tranches are revisited as better sources surface: a register improves by returning to its own work, not only by adding to it.
- Inspection sprint, tranche sixty-seven - the Al Mawakeb campuses: Al Barsha (Good for a seventh consecutive inspection after seven years at Acceptable, with the first recorded significant improvement in outcomes, Outstanding personal development in all four phases, and a trilingual English-Arabic-French programme well below premium pricing) and Al Khawaneej (Good on its third inspection with Very Good and Outstanding ratings inside, an established system for identifying and supporting students of determination, and around 974 of 1,200 students Emirati - a striking marker of community trust). Published beside both: the group’s standing question, whether these schools have the ambition to climb above Good or are content to meet the regulator’s minimum, plus the lighting and facilities details inspectors recorded. Ninety-seven written summaries live; forty-eight inclusion entries.
- Inspection sprint, tranche sixty-six: American School of Creative Science Nad Al Sheba - Good confirmed in February 2024 after three consecutive Acceptable cycles, the rating that permitted its growth toward Grade 12, delivering the American curriculum alongside a deeply embedded Islamic ethos and Qur’an enrichment. Published beside it: the Acceptable history is recent enough to warrant asking what changed and whether those people are still there, and the campus and staffing settlement after its move. Ninety-five written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche sixty-five - the 2024-25 cycle completed: Bloom World Academy (Good on debut, personalised learning and curriculum adaptation Very Good, 103 students of determination supported by a named Integra team, with teaching at Good and premium fees stated plainly), Durham School Dubai and Dubai Schools Nad Al Sheba (both Acceptable on debut, published with the same care as any top-tier page). Every school inspected in that unusual four-school cycle is now in this register. Dubai International Academy’s entry has also been deepened with the report’s formal development points - including strengthening the inclusion improvement plan so barriers for students of determination are reduced - because an Outstanding school’s homework matters just as much. Ninety-four written summaries live; forty-six inclusion entries.
- Inspection sprint, tranche sixty-four: Dar Al Marefa - Good for an eighth consecutive inspection, with Very Good health, safety and support across all four phases, Islamic values named by inspectors as the heart of the school’s culture, and a genuinely singular position as Dubai’s only bilingual Arabic-English IB school with an approximately 85% Emirati student body. Published beside it: a settled ceiling at Good with predominantly Good achievement ratings, a new principal arriving for 2024-25 from a school he had lifted to Very Good, and premium-band fees against a Good rating - a comparison worth raising directly with the school. Ninety-one written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche sixty-three: Raffles International School - Very Good for a fourth consecutive inspection after eight years at Good, carrying twenty-one individual Outstanding ratings inside a report whose headline says only Very Good, with Outstanding safeguarding in every phase, Outstanding facilities on a 315,000 square foot campus, and an Outstanding British Schools Overseas verdict across all categories in May 2025. Published beside it: wellbeing at Very Good rather than the top tier, premium fees running to nearly AED 84,000 at Year 13, and the question the numbers invite - which measures still stand between this school and Outstanding overall. Ninety written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche sixty-two: GEMS International School Al Khail - Good sustained since 2018, with Outstanding health, safety and child protection in every phase, Very Good teaching in KG and the Diploma Programme, a rising Diploma on strengthened pathways, and senior provision that is genuinely rare: an aviation and space Centre of Excellence and a first-in-the-UAE Embry-Riddle partnership worth a year of US university credits. Published beside it: declines in KG and Primary science attainment and Primary English progress, teaching only Good through the middle of the school, and the inspectors’ formal development point on inclusion - provision ‘effective but not fully consistent’. Eighty-nine written summaries live; forty-five inclusion entries.
- Inspection sprint, tranche sixty-one: Jumeira Baccalaureate School - Very Good retained, with Outstanding Diploma English, an Outstanding curriculum meeting the needs of almost all students including students of determination, Outstanding safeguarding infrastructure, and wellbeing embedded rather than announced. Published beside it, with the arithmetic this register insists on: the Diploma profile is solid in the middle rather than top-heavy - about 74% of students scored 30 or more points in 2025, while 40-plus scores have generally run between 3% and 5% - and inspectors’ observation that some students are reluctant to participate in group work and some are still building confidence in English. Eighty-eight written summaries live; forty-four inclusion entries.
- Inspection sprint, tranche sixty: Dubai International Academy Al Barsha - Very Good in 2023-24, reached in six years from a standing start, running the complete IB continuum including the Career-related Programme, on a 23-acre campus with institutional expertise drawn from its Outstanding-rated sister school. Published beside it: teacher turnover of 31% in 2022 falling to 20% by 2023 - improving, and still a question for a scaling school - the costs that sit outside tuition, and the year-group capacity question every growing school should be asked. Eighty-seven written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche fifty-nine: Greenfield International School - Very Good held after a climb that took seven consecutive years at Good before the step up, with core-subject attainment and progress now at least Very Good in every phase, all four IB programmes accredited, PISA targets exceeded, and mature behaviour and parent engagement named. Published beside it: Arabic and Islamic Education as the standing improvement area, teaching consistency between phases as the recurring parent concern, and a fee range so wide (roughly AED 33,700 to 89,000) that only the exact year-group figure means anything. Eighty-six written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche fifty-eight: Arcadia British School - Very Good again in 2023-24 after reaching that level on only its second full inspection, with an Outstanding inclusion judgement as the report’s strongest feature and an Outstanding British Schools Overseas verdict across all eight performance areas in October 2024. Published beside it: the Sixth Form opened only in 2024-25, so there is no A Level track record yet, and the open question of which academic measures must move for a school with Outstanding inclusion to reach Outstanding overall. Eighty-five written summaries live; forty-three inclusion entries.
- Inspection sprint, tranche fifty-seven: Raffles World Academy - Very Good for a fifth consecutive cycle, with Outstanding governance, Outstanding parent partnership and Outstanding facilities, unusual leadership continuity (the same principal since 2016, coordinators in post since 2010), and a full IB continuum with mother-tongue teaching in five languages. Published beside it, because results deserve arithmetic rather than adjectives: Diploma averages have slipped from 35 points in 2021 to 32 in 2023, and the share of candidates scoring 40 or more fell from 29% to 6% - pass rates remain high, but the top end is a question to put to the school. Eighty-four written summaries live - exactly half the register now speaks with the inspectors’ voice.
- Inspection sprint, tranche fifty-six: GEMS Metropole Motor City - Good, held after a breakthrough that followed four consecutive Acceptable cycles, with Primary core subjects lifted to Very Good, Outstanding health, safety and child protection in every phase, and Very Good wellbeing and parent engagement. Its inclusion provision is among the largest documented anywhere in this register: 480 students of determination supported by a Head of Inclusion, two SENCOs, three counsellors, eight specialist teachers, three EAL specialists, therapy access and differentiated ASDAN and iBTEC pathways. Published beside it: most measures still sit at Good, and with nearly 3,900 students on roll, the question of how an unremarkable child gets noticed. Eighty-three written summaries live; forty-two inclusion entries.
- Inspection sprint, tranche fifty-five: Nord Anglia International School Dubai - Outstanding overall, Outstanding inclusion and Outstanding wellbeing, with A Level, IB and BTEC pathways side by side, a British Schools Overseas Outstanding verdict in February 2025, and around 320 students of determination supported by an inclusion team of roughly twenty staff. Published beside it: the school began with a selective intake and now describes itself as wholly inclusive while still assessing applicants - so ask directly how admissions decisions are made for a child with additional needs - and a new principal arrived for 2025-26, meaning the rating was earned under previous leadership. Eighty-two written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche fifty-four: Deira International School - Outstanding overall, Outstanding inclusion and Outstanding wellbeing, with outstanding progress in English, mathematics and science across every phase, two independent British Schools Overseas Outstanding verdicts, and published results including a 100% IB pass rate in 2025. Its inclusion entry is now the fullest in the register: 246 students of determination, about 12% of students with identified needs and roughly 20% supported in total, a clear inclusive admission policy, and ASDAN pathways where they suit a student better. The school’s own principal frames the rating as particularly hard-won ‘considering our fully inclusive admissions’ - the standard every top-rated school should be asked to meet. Eighty-one written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche fifty-three: Dwight School Dubai - Good on its third inspection, with three core-subject ratings improved to Very Good, Diploma English rated Outstanding, the Primary Years Programme named a particular strength, and a rare, creditable jump in Arabic and Islamic Studies where almost all ratings moved up. Its wellbeing machinery is described in detail - surveys, weekly check-ins, wellbeing champions, an open-door culture parents value - and the honest counterweight is published too: wellbeing outcomes still rated Good rather than Very Good, a young school on its second campus, and most measures still sitting at Good rather than above. Eighty written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche fifty-two: Fairgreen International School - Good for a third cycle, with Outstanding safeguarding and health and safety, Very Good wellbeing, strong PYP and DP progress, and a genuinely singular offer: the only Dubai school running all four IB programmes, inside The Sustainable City, with a career-related post-16 pathway in sustainability fields no other school replicates. Published beside it: Arabic and Islamic Education at Acceptable across all phases with inspectors calling improvement a matter of some urgency, uneven use of assessment data between phases, and Diploma cohorts of six and fourteen students - averages of 31 and 32 points that are encouraging but far too small to read as a trend. Seventy-nine written summaries live; forty-one inclusion entries.
- Inspection sprint, tranche fifty-one: Dubai British School Jumeirah Park - Outstanding for the first time in 2023-24 after two cycles at Very Good, with leadership Outstanding across all six sub-categories, science progress outstanding, and inspectors quoting an excellent student work ethic; a British Schools Overseas inspection in 2025 returned Outstanding too. Published beside it: Arabic and Islamic Education at Acceptable in the senior phases, teaching dropping to Very Good at Post-16 with consistency specifically requested, variable mathematics performance, and the note that matters to any family arriving mid-year - support for students new to the school is occasionally less successful at closing learning gaps quickly. Seventy-eight written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche fifty: Dubai British School Emirates Hills - Outstanding for a fifth consecutive inspection, with self-evaluation, governance, parent partnership and daily management all judged Outstanding, and a British Schools Overseas report independently calling it an outstanding school for pupils from three to eighteen. And because this register publishes improvement requirements at every tier, the page carries its homework too: Arabic grammar and sentence construction, literacy for the few lower attainers, higher-order thinking in the senior phases, and marking that tells students how to improve. Fifty tranches completed - seventy-seven schools now speak with the inspectors’ voice.
- Inspection sprint, tranche forty-nine: Safa British School - Very Good for a third cycle, with leadership, wellbeing, inclusion and behaviour among the measures rated Outstanding, a documented climb from Acceptable in 2009-11, and two separate British Schools Overseas inspections (2022 and 2025) both returning Outstanding, at fees well below the top-tier schools whose outcomes it rivals. Published beside it: Arabic and Islamic Education at Acceptable in both phases - the clearest reason the headline rating is not Outstanding - teaching consistency to be improved by sharing best practice, and improvement plans carrying too many unprioritised actions. Seventy-six written summaries live; forty inclusion entries.
- Inspection sprint, tranche forty-eight: Jebel Ali School - Very Good since 2015-16, with Outstanding Foundation Stage and Primary, international benchmarks risen to outstanding in English and mathematics, a PIRLS score 36 points above target, A Level, GCSE and BTEC breadth with strong GCSE value-added, and close to AED 60 million invested since the ownership change with AED 25 million more expected. Published beside it: Arabic and Islamic Education carry increased weight in the final rating and are the school’s own stated route to Outstanding - so ask what the plan is and who leads it. Seventy-five written summaries live; thirty-nine inclusion entries.
- Inspection sprint, tranche forty-seven: Victory Heights Primary School - Outstanding retained, with Outstanding teaching, assessment, wellbeing and inclusion, and a second inspectorate (British Schools Overseas) reaching the same verdict independently. Its inclusion entry is among the strongest in the register: meticulous identification, bespoke pathways, and students of determination making more than expected progress. Published beside it, because even an Outstanding school has homework: marking and feedback to be applied consistently across all subjects - and the practical planning note that this is a primary-only school, so the Year 6 move needs thinking about early. Seventy-four written summaries live; thirty-eight inclusion entries.
- Inspection sprint, tranche forty-six: American International School - Good in 2023-24, its first in over a decade after thirteen consecutive Acceptable cycles, with Outstanding social responsibility and innovation in the upper phases, Very Good personal development, an inclusion cohort of 197 students of determination judged a genuine strength, and fees well below the American-curriculum median. Published with equal weight: inspectors’ formal recommendation on deficiencies in staffing, resources and facilities across science, music, art, digital learning and sport; management and facilities rated in the second-lowest band; a specific call to recruit suitably US-experienced staff; and thin subject choice for teenagers drawn to the arts, humanities or economics. Seventy-three written summaries live; thirty-seven inclusion entries.
- Inspection sprint, tranche forty-five: Little Flower English School - Acceptable for a tenth consecutive cycle, which the page frames honestly in both directions: it is a ceiling, and it is also a recovery from three years rated Weak at the start of inspections. Published in full: a Kindergarten where children make good progress in every subject, a Good governance rating, a purpose-built campus and among the lowest fees benchmarked in Dubai - alongside teaching that drops to Acceptable in Primary and Middle, a 1:20 ratio in a KG and Primary setting, and inspectors’ request that individual education plans specify small, measurable steps and that all teachers, not only some, support students of determination. Seventy-two written summaries live; thirty-six inclusion entries.
- Sector update, verified today: KHDA inspections resume in 2026-27 under a two-tier model - a school will receive either a full inspection or a shorter monitoring visit, a differentiated approach closer to the Abu Dhabi and Sharjah cycles. The official key-findings page now carries this, along with the note that two Dubai schools, Clarion and Renaissance, are closing at the end of the current academic year. Neither sits in this register’s coverage, so no page here changes - we publish it because a school closing is the most decision-critical fact a family can be given, and because it is exactly why a register must be maintained rather than published once. Our ratings-day protocol stands ready: full reconciliation within 48 hours of any new publication.
- Inspection sprint, tranche forty-four: Woodlem Park School - the most serious findings this register has published. Acceptable overall, with real strengths recorded (a calm, happy environment, strong behaviour, very good attendance, good Islamic Education and upper-phase English, a PIRLS target exceeded, and unusual curricular breadth at some of the lowest fees in the sector) - and, in the same section, the facts a family must have: mathematics downgraded to Weak in Middle and Secondary, science to Acceptable, wellbeing leadership judged underdeveloped, no grades permitted beyond Grade 10 until the rating improves, and a permanent principal not appointed until January 2024. We publish this the way we publish an Outstanding school: completely, without softening and without contempt. Seventy-one written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche forty-three: Oxford School - Good for the first time in its entire inspection history, after a Weak rating in 2008-09 and eleven straight Acceptable cycles. A school open since 1988 finally crossing the line the regulator sets for every Dubai school, with Very Good health, safety, care and support in all four phases. Published beside it: Primary mathematics still the exception, earlier findings on laboratories, Arabic library stock and Foundation Stage layout that a visitor should check personally, and a campus that is functional rather than premium - judge it against the fee. Seventy written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche forty-two: Nibras International School - one of the most striking turnarounds in Dubai’s inspection record: Good in 2023-24 after twelve consecutive cycles at Acceptable stretching back to 2008-09, with personal development Very Good in every phase, Very Good health and safety, and Very Good parent partnership. Published beside it: achievement still ranging from acceptable to good, writing skills flagged, and support for students of determination and gifted learners named as an area for improvement with 99 students of determination on roll. Sixty-nine written summaries live; thirty-five inclusion entries.
- Inspection sprint, tranche forty-one: Universal American School - Very Good with inclusion and wellbeing also Very Good, strong English and science across every phase, Outstanding facilities and Outstanding parent regard, and a culture inspectors singled out. Published with it: Arabic as a first language needing sharper focus in Middle school, self-evaluation needing to measure strategic impact, and IB Diploma averages in the low-to-mid 30s - solid, above the UAE average, and worth asking about the spread rather than the headline. Sixty-eight written summaries live; thirty-four inclusion entries.
- Inspection sprint, tranche forty: North London Collegiate School Dubai - Very Good with 33 Outstanding ratings, Outstanding English, mathematics and science, a 1:8 ratio and a wellbeing culture inspectors described as care, courtesy and consideration. Published with the same prominence, because at AED 91,700-143,700 a family is entitled to all of it: teaching quality judged inconsistent with differentiation still a work in progress, Islamic Education and Arabic at Acceptable across every phase, three previously Outstanding ratings dropping this cycle, and Diploma cohorts small enough that average scores flatter - so ask for the full distribution, not the mean. Sixty-seven written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche thirty-nine: Uptown International School - Very Good since 2016-17 across six inspections, with an Outstanding inclusion judgement that is the school’s defining strength: inspectors named provision for students of determination and for students learning English among the best things it does. Its IB pathway breadth and post-16 improvement are recorded, and so is the honest question the record raises - which academic standards must move for a school this stable to reach Outstanding overall. Sixty-six written summaries live; thirty-three inclusion entries, and the students-of-determination dataset now spans every rating tier from Outstanding provision to schools inspectors told to do better.
- Inspection sprint, tranche thirty-eight: Dubai Gem Private School - Good, with achievement above expectations in Secondary and Post-16, National Agenda science attainment outstanding, a PIRLS target exceeded, outstanding behaviour, and a 1:8 ratio that is among the most generous anywhere in this register. Published beside it: Arabic needing development, reading-literacy interventions applied inconsistently, self-evaluation needing sharper data rigour, and a governing board improving infrastructure under stated financial constraints. Also banked for the coverage sprint: Dubai Scholars Private School’s verified findings - twelve inspections at Good, with most individual measures at Very Good - the school is not yet in this register, so nothing publishes yet. Sixty-five written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche thirty-seven - the Ambassador pair: Ambassador School (Very Good for a third time after climbing Acceptable to Good to Very Good, a 1:9 ratio, 9% staff turnover, Outstanding Secondary assessment, 162 students of determination supported by 38 assistants - published with the Arabic weakness, the KG variability, and the governance ask to name who owns each improvement goal) and Ambassador International Academy (Good with Very Good features, 85% of standards at Good or better, a blended UK and IB curriculum at below-IB fees, with its youth stated plainly). Sixty-four written summaries live; thirty-two inclusion entries.
- Inspection sprint, tranche thirty-six: Cambridge International School - Good every year since 2009-10, Very Good wellbeing embedded in what inspectors call a highly inclusive school, high achievement in Secondary and Post-16 English and mathematics, and facilities maintained to a very high standard. Published with it: teaching is Good rather than Very Good in Primary and Secondary, so the strongest practice sits at both ends of the school and the middle is where to ask questions - plus the plain observation that fifteen years at one rating is both stability and a ceiling. Sixty-two written summaries live; thirty-one inclusion entries.
- Inspection sprint, tranche thirty-five - the Star International pair: Mirdif (Good since 2017, Very Good personal development and facilities, with Arabic and lesson differentiation the asks, and its fee range placed honestly against the British-curriculum median) and Al Qusais (Good, very strong learning skills, Very Good Secondary English and parent partnership, at a 1:11 ratio - published with the marking, curriculum-continuity and IEP-precision recommendations, and the turnover history stated in full: 45% in 2017, 22% in 2020, 33% in 2023). Sixty-one written summaries live; thirty inclusion entries.
- Inspection sprint, tranche thirty-four: Regent International School - Very Good for a third consecutive cycle after eight years at Good, every Foundation Stage rating Outstanding, small capped class sizes, and an Outstanding British Schools Overseas inspection corroborating the picture from a second inspectorate. Published beside it: Arabic as the recurring development area, inspectors’ recommendation to strengthen support for students of determination, and the plain fact that its rebuilt Secondary and Sixth Form have no exam track record yet. Fifty-nine written summaries live; twenty-nine inclusion entries.
- A new page most guides would never build: /coverage - a live, computed account of what this register verifies and what it still lacks. Schools covered, fees published, inspector summaries written, inclusion judgements recorded, and the honest remainder: how many schools are still unread, that no campus has been visited, that inspections are paused until 2026-27, and that verified findings for schools outside our coverage sit written but unpublished until those schools have pages. Every figure is calculated when the site builds, so it can never quietly drift - and it can never flatter us.
- Inspection sprint, tranche thirty-three: Apple International School - Good since 2016-17, with wellbeing rated a full grade higher than the school itself, assessment Very Good across every phase, and an ASDAN pathway supporting 164 students of determination. Published with equal weight: inspectors’ direct finding of weak attainment in IGCSE and A-Level examinations - a recommendation that has recurred across cycles - plus Acceptable Post-16 core subjects, inconsistent teaching quality, insufficient challenge for able students, and punctuality concerns in the sixth form. A school can be genuinely caring and still not be delivering results; parents deserve both halves of that sentence. Also banked for the coverage sprint: The Apple International Community School’s verified first-inspection findings - not yet in this register. Fifty-eight written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche thirty-two: Gulf Model School - the hardest kind of page to write well, and the reason this register exists. Acceptable retained, told with the context that changes its meaning: eight consecutive years rated Weak before reaching Acceptable in 2022-23, an inspection conducted four months into a new principal’s tenure, a dual Kerala State Board and CBSE pathway at a low fee - published beside the plain warnings: Acceptable is the regulator’s minimum, class sizes run into the mid-twenties and above, and independent parent sentiment has been poor. We do not soften these pages and we do not sneer at them; families in this fee bracket get the same evidence and the same respect as everyone else. Fifty-seven written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche thirty-one: Pearl Wisdom School - Good in 2023-24 after an Acceptable debut, one of the fastest single-cycle improvements in the register, with Kindergarten transformed, Middle-phase core subjects lifted to Very Good, benchmark judgements moving from weak to outstanding, and small classes underpinning behaviour. Published in the same breath: Middle-school Arabic judged Weak, and curriculum adaptation for students of determination and gifted learners only Acceptable across every phase - an inclusion entry we have written plainly, because a family whose child needs adapted lessons must not learn this after enrolling. Fifty-six written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche thirty - the Acceptable tier, treated with the same care as the Outstanding one: Buds Public School, where the report shows good progress in Islamic Education in the middle and secondary phases and strong personal development, published alongside the plain reasons for the rating - core subjects at Acceptable across phases, benchmark progression below expectations, and investment constraints that other schools at similar fees have overcome. Families choosing at this fee level deserve the same quality of information as families choosing at the top, and they have almost never had it. Also banked for the coverage sprint: Sabari Indian School’s verified Good-tier findings - the school is not yet in this register. Fifty-five written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche twenty-nine: Bright Riders School - one of the clearest improvement stories in the register, moving from two Acceptable cycles to Good with indicators at Good-or-better rising from 41% to about 88%, Very Good personal development and safeguarding throughout, and the inspectors’ wellbeing verdict quoted. Published beside it: Arabic still at Acceptable, wellbeing overall at Good, and the fact that its senior grades do not exist yet - Grade 11 opens in 2026, Grade 12 in 2027 - so there are no senior results to judge. Fifty-four written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche twenty-eight: Our Own High School Al Warqa’a - Good for ten consecutive years at enormous scale, with core-subject achievement sitting above the overall rating and more than 3,500 students taking part in the regulator’s wellbeing survey; published with the two questions scale always raises. Fifty-three written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche twenty-seven: GEMS Our Own Indian School - Very Good retained, with Outstanding science in Primary and Secondary, Outstanding personal development in every phase and Outstanding curriculum quality throughout, at fees starting near AED 7,200. Recorded plainly beside it: this is a school that was rated Acceptable a decade ago and climbed back, which is the kind of trajectory a single-word rating can never show. Fifty-two written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche twenty-six: Global Indian International School - the inspectors’ own verdict quoted (‘a good school; it meets the expectations of the UAE’), Kindergarten its strongest phase, students of determination identified and supported effectively - published with the science dip in KG, the Arabic ask, and a detail no brochure would print but every commuting family needs: attendance is high at 96%, yet inspectors recorded students arriving late because of school transport. Fifty-one written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche twenty-five: Pristine Private School - ten consecutive cycles at Good, and a report that shows why families stay: Outstanding Early Years, Outstanding safeguarding and personal development in every phase, maths and science Very Good or Outstanding throughout, a PIRLS score of 651 at the Advanced International Benchmark, and a 1:12 ratio rare at this fee level. Published alongside: Secondary Arabic at Acceptable, Post-16 English at Good, and the inclusion caveat that lesson-level curriculum adaptation is not yet consistently secure. Fifty written summaries live - and the value tier keeps proving that a one-word rating is the least interesting thing about a school.
- Inspection sprint, tranche twenty-four: Amity School Dubai - Good, and climbing from an Acceptable start in 2019-20, with Outstanding safeguarding and personal development, English a named strength across three phases, and leadership rated a full grade above the school’s overall mark - which the regulator itself treats as the leading indicator of where a school is going. Published beside it: the self-evaluation rigour, reading-capacity and wellbeing asks. Forty-nine written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche twenty-three: GEMS Legacy (Good, with the middle phase its strength and the honest detail no brochure prints - several KG measures slipped a grade this cycle, and class sizes have been flagged as too large in places), GEMS Royal Dubai (Very Good with outstanding features: care, support and curriculum design all Outstanding), and GEMS World Academy, whose summary is dated to the 2022-23 cycle it comes from, because a verdict is only as good as its date. Forty-eight written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche twenty-two - the JSS siblings: International (Very Good since 2019-20, Outstanding personal development and safety in every phase, 149 students of determination supported by therapists and parent-built IEPs - and the asks published: Arabic, a more tailored wellbeing programme, deeper personalisation) and Private (a third Very Good with standards rising to Outstanding, and student attitudes named the defining strength). Forty-five written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche twenty-one: The Millennium School - seven straight Very Goods, KG and now Secondary Outstanding in the core subjects, English and science Outstanding in every phase at AED 18,000-27,000 - with the value-tier trade-off stated plainly: average classes around 35, and the question of how support reaches a large class’s quiet middle. Sector context from the same cycle: of 32 Indian-curriculum schools, 83% of students now attend Good-or-better - and this register’s pages increasingly explain why. Forty-three written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche twenty: GEMS New Millennium - Very Good since 2019-20 with five Outstanding sub-ratings, a rare dual CBSE-and-A-Level track at mid-range fees, and an inclusion entry that matters to families’ budgets: around 250 students of determination supported with no additional fees for learning support. The honest column holds the A-Level ceiling, the tight footprint, and the turnover question. Forty-two written summaries live; twenty-two inclusion entries.
- Inspection sprint, tranche nineteen - the Good tier begins, where the rating most undersells the school: Springdales Dubai, Good on the headline but Very Good through KG and Primary core subjects, Outstanding personal development and safeguarding in every phase, a rare Outstanding for management and facilities, ASDAN pathways for its 115 SEND students - and the honest asks: the Middle school catching up, Arabic at Acceptable, and how quality holds as a half-full campus grows. This is why the register reads reports, not just ratings. Forty-one written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche eighteen: The Winchester School, Jebel Ali - nine straight years at Very Good after a climb from Acceptable unique in this market, science and curriculum design Outstanding in every phase at AED 15,000-33,000 fees, around 400 students of determination supported at scale - and the operational truths published beside the triumph: a 1:18 ratio, turnover that ran above average, and the consistency challenge every 4,300-student school must answer. Forty written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche seventeen - into the value heartland: Delhi Private School Dubai, where wellbeing is judged Outstanding (‘an exceptional wellbeing vision, fully embedded’), inclusion is Very Good with 228 students of determination and a thirty-strong specialist team, and the honest gap is published - pastoral excellence beside an Acceptable ceiling in Islamic Education and Arabic. Forty written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche sixteen - the Emirates International siblings: Jumeirah’s breakthrough to Very Good after more than a decade at Good, with its Outstanding Foundation Stage and inspector-highlighted culture of inclusion; and Meadows, Very Good since 2019-20 with previously Outstanding Post-16 core outcomes - plus the inspectors’ repeated ask, published: add the IB Career-related Programme as a true vocational route. The newly-Very-Good cohort of 2023-24 is now fully read. Thirty-eight written summaries live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche fifteen: German International School - Very Good after nine consecutive cycles at Good, thirty-seven indicators improved, Outstanding personal development with bullying described as very rare, the wellbeing-vision gap quoted verbatim from the report, and an honest fit note: German is the language of instruction, the right choice for German-connected families and a demanding path for others. Also banked for the coverage sprint: Dubai International School Garhoud’s verified Acceptable-tier findings - the school is not yet in this register, and the log records only what is published.
- Inspection sprint, tranche fourteen: Ranches Primary School - four consecutive Very Goods, Outstanding parent partnership, a Very Good inclusion verdict with real texture (109 students of determination, dedicated spaces, external therapists) - and the plateau published: consistent, not accelerating, with the report’s own wellbeing-monitoring and FS-transition asks alongside. Thirty-five written summaries now live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche thirteen: Swiss International Scientific School - Very Good with Outstanding features, the climb from an Acceptable debut completed with every prior recommendation implemented, the bilingual promise independently verified by inspectors, and a Very Good inclusion verdict with sensory spaces and individualised plans - plus the classroom-level asks published: MYP ownership of learning, research technology, and stronger learning-support roles. Thirty-four written summaries now live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche twelve: Dubai Heights Academy - the watershed Very Good with outstanding features, 47 measures improved in one cycle, wellbeing Outstanding as ‘a cornerstone of its culture’ - and the phase-level honesty most summaries hide: teaching Very Good in FS and Primary, Good in the newer Secondary as it grows into its building. Thirty-three written summaries now live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche eleven: Royal Grammar School Guildford Dubai - the first school in Dubai’s inspection history to earn Very Good on debut, with Outstanding parent partnership, pastoral care and safeguarding - and the honest chapters told alongside: leadership turnover through the very years that built the result, and a senior school still in formation. Also logged: Kent College Dubai’s verified Very Good (with its fully-inclusive verdict) is banked for the coverage sprint - the school is not yet in this register, and we encode nothing we cannot page. Thirty-two written summaries now live.
- Inspection sprint, tranche ten: Brighton College Dubai - Very Good with Outstanding features on its third inspection, Outstanding National Agenda standards, a rare safeguarding commendation - and the governance homework published verbatim in spirit: sharpen self-evaluation, and align admission and inclusion policy with the stated vision. The movers audit also continued: Dubai British School Jumeirah Park’s rise to Outstanding is confirmed already correct in this register; AFLEC Lycée Français International is noted as a coverage gap for the expansion sprint, not an error.
- Inspection sprint, tranche nine: GEMS FirstPoint - the breakthrough to Very Good on its sixth inspection, with 79% of areas at the top two levels, exemplary behaviour culture, a Very Good SEND verdict, and the honest pairing: inspectors still asked for inclusion support to strengthen further. Alongside it, a register audit: the published 2023-24 movers list (thirteen schools newly Very Good, three decliners) was cross-checked against every affected entry in this register - all consistent, including the two Weak-rated schools that sit outside current coverage, exactly as our tier pages state.
- Inspection sprint, tranche eight: Credence High School (Very Good - the full climb from an Acceptable debut told, Outstanding safeguarding and personal development, and the Arabic weakness published), and Citizens School - the first entry from the 2024-25 cycle, when only four schools received full inspections; its Good rating confirms this register’s existing data, and its fee range is corrected to the school’s published 2025-26 schedule (AED 45,000-80,000). Inspector summaries now state their cycle per school.
- Inspection sprint, tranche seven: Sunmarke (a third Very Good with outstanding features - and its reading-skills homework published alongside), Horizon English (Outstanding since 2018-19, nothing below Good, now paired with its official Outstanding inclusion rating), and Horizon International (Very Good after twelve inspections at Good - the climb and the plateau both told). Thirty school pages now carry inspector verdicts; fifteen carry inclusion judgements.
- Inspection sprint, tranche six: Hartland International (Very Good with a band of Outstanding judgements - and the honest note that the step up runs through teaching and leadership) and Kings’ School Al Barsha (a first Outstanding, wellbeing Outstanding, and an inclusion verdict worth quoting: ‘an exceptionally inclusive learning community’, 259 students of determination on roll). Twenty-eight schools now carry inspector verdicts; fourteen carry inclusion judgements.
- From KHDA’s published Key Findings 2023-24 report, supplied by a reader: a full official-numbers page - the 23/48/85/51/2 rating distribution, 81% of students in Good-or-better schools, the wellbeing spread (only 7% of schools Outstanding), the inclusion sector picture (76% Good or better), and which habits the 26 improving schools shared - every figure sourced to the regulator, decoded into what it means for a shortlist.
- Inspection sprint, tranche five - the value segment and the improvement journeys, because honesty matters most in the middle of the market: GEMS Founders Dubai (Very Good at 6,000-student scale, with around 860 students of determination and inclusion a defining strength), GEMS Founders Al Mizhar (broad improvement, rating held at Good - both facts published), and GEMS Al Barsha National School (new leadership, early climb, 21% of indicators at the top tiers - stated plainly). Twenty-six schools now carry verdicts.
- Inspection sprint, tranche four - and a primary-source breakthrough: KHDA’s published 2023-24 table of official per-school Inclusion and Wellbeing ratings. Nine schools now carry the regulator’s own inclusion verdict (all Outstanding in this batch - Deira International, both DESS schools, GEMS Jumeira Primary, GEMS Wellington International, Horizon English, Jumeirah College, Nord Anglia and Safa), and Jumeirah College and GEMS Jumeira Primary join the inspector-summary set: twenty schools with verdicts, eleven with official inclusion ratings. The full-register inclusion sweep continues from the same published table.
- By request of Spanish-speaking families: a native Spanish welcome page joins the guide - nine languages now, with the full hreflang mesh extended. All maps are now Google Maps, on every school page and the city map. Link shadows removed sitewide per the design brief, and a formal copyright notice added. Every change re-audited across all pages before sealing.
- Inspection sprint, tranche three: DESS Primary, DESS College and Dubai International Academy - seventeen schools now carry inspector verdicts, and the inclusion dataset reaches seven, recording among other things that DESS College’s Outstanding-judged provision for 215 students of determination comes at no additional cost, and DIA’s honest development note on engaging every parent of identified students. Strengths and improvement asks published together, as always.
- Inspection sprint, tranche two: seven more schools now carry ‘What the inspectors said’ - both JESS campuses, GEMS Wellington International and both Wellington Academies, and both Repton campuses - fourteen of 169 in total, each with strengths and required improvements from the last full cycle, including the honest ones (Repton’s Arabic concern, JESS’s wellbeing-data note). The inclusion dataset grows to four schools, now recording that JESS Jumeirah charges no additional fees for SEN provision - the kind of verified fact that changes a family’s shortlist.
- The inspection sprint begins - the roadmap’s single biggest lever: ‘What the inspectors said’ now appears on the first seven school pages, with strengths and required improvements paraphrased from each school’s last full DSIB inspection and its published record, dated per cycle and linked to the official report. Verified inclusion judgements are now shown for three schools - the first entries in the students-of-determination dataset. Summaries are added only as each report is actually read: a school without one is unread, not unjudged.
- Roadmap Phase 3 opens its intake: parents can now share first-hand school experience through a structured, human-moderated submission - anonymised excerpts, balanced per school, schools given a right of reply, never purchasable by anyone - and Abu Dhabi’s expansion page is live with an honest status (verification not yet begun; no date promised before the data work is done) and a be-first-to-know list.
- Roadmap Phase 2 begins: the compare tool now takes up to four schools, fills itself from your shortlist in one tap, and marks the rows where schools actually differ so decision points find your eye first; and a full interactive map - every district’s school count and strongest-rated school in one view, honestly labelled to district level until the exact-coordinate sprint, each circle linking into its area guide.
- Roadmap Phase 1 build: best-value lists computed from the register with the formula published (no school can pay to appear - that’s the point); explainable match scores in the Family Decision Pack (every match now shows its 0-100 score and exactly why); a private admissions tracker - stage, deadline and notes per application with downloadable calendar reminders, stored only on your device; and every area page upgraded with computed intelligence: rating mix, curriculum mix, fee span and the nearest alternative areas.
- Walking further with families, in both directions: an honest curriculum-decision guide (British, Indian, American, IB - destinations at 18, learning styles, price bands, and the five lenses that actually decide it), an early-years guide for the question before the register begins (including the guarantee-versus-priority question to ask school nurseries in writing), and a first-90-days guide for the hardest month no directory covers - the one after enrolment.
- For families of students of determination: a dedicated special educational needs guide - admission rights under Dubai’s inclusive education framework, how to read the inclusion section of KHDA inspection reports, the support-cost truth, and six visit questions that reveal real provision. The inclusion-lead question now opens the Visit Kit on every school page. We state plainly what we have not verified per school, and invite documented parent experience to shape what we verify next.
- Design consistency pass across all pages: every guide and tool now shares the same structure (breadcrumb, kicker, title, closing link); the shortlist now shows each saved school’s true rating colour instead of neutral grey; printing any page - including your family plan - yields clean content without forms or navigation; and keyboard focus is clearly visible on every button and the language switcher.
- The Family Decision Pack: enter your arrival date, children and budget, and the guide computes - privately, on your own device - correct year groups under the 31 December cut-off, matched schools from the verified register, an honest all-in family budget and a personalised application timeline, printable to share. Plus a plain-English jargon decoder covering every acronym admissions emails assume you know.
- Post-launch brutal audit of our own FAQ: corrected two rating claims that contradicted this register (Brighton College and NLCS are Very Good, not ‘Outstanding or Good’), rebuilt the affordable-schools answer to name only register-verified fees, resolved a self-contradiction on when inspections resume (expected 2026-27), rounded estimated fees to sensible precision, and linked the cut-off, mid-year and budgeting answers to their dedicated guides. We hold our FAQ to the same standard as our register.
- Correction, caught before the main domain served it: the year-group chart now reflects the UAE’s new admissions age cut-off - 31 December of the admission year from 2026-27 (moved from 31 August; April-start schools keep 31 March; new admissions only, per the Ministry of Education’s December 2025 decision). Our own FAQ already carried the correct rule; the new page briefly contradicted it. Fixed within the hour - this log exists precisely for moments like this.
- Three answer guides added - the questions every relocating family asks: a year-group equivalence chart (UK Year, US Grade, Indian Class and IB stage by age, on the 31 August cut-off), the honest admissions timeline including the CBSE April track and mid-year entry, and the moving-to-Dubai schooling checklist in the right order. Also: breadcrumb structured data on every school page, hardened security headers, and an email list for register updates - factual, occasional, no marketing.
- Cost calculator upgraded: pick any school and its mid-range fee fills in automatically from the verified register - no typing, no guessing - and results now include an approximate per-term figure alongside the yearly range.
- App v2, all device-local and account-free: save schools to a private shortlist with side-by-side comparison; the entire register now caches for full offline use; every school page gains a Visit Kit - rating-aware questions to ask on a tour - with private notes saved only on your device; a true-cost calculator (extras and transport, honestly ranged); native share buttons; app shortcuts; and a ‘what changed since your last visit’ badge.
- The app: the guide is now installable on iPhone, Android, tablet and desktop - home-screen icon, full-screen standalone mode, and offline access to previously viewed schools via a service worker. Free, no store account, no extra permissions; see /app.html.
- Cross-device sign-off round: comparison table now scrolls within itself on narrow phones instead of stretching the page, language flags enlarged to the 44px touch-target guideline, and the header releases its sticky position on small screens to give parents their full viewport back.
- Rating colour system revised on the client’s brief: Outstanding now gold, Very Good green, Good light green, Acceptable amber, Weak blue, not-yet-rated grey - applied across every tag, tier card, rating page and the social card, with all pairings kept accessibility-compliant.
- Launch build finalised: live travel-time directions from every school page (real-time Google Maps routing from the reader’s own location), a guided School Finder - a chat-style assistant matching families against the verified register in three questions - and a correction link on every school page so schools can update their own record.
- Translation launch: human-written welcome pages in Arabic, Russian, Hindi, French, German and Chinese, with a language switcher on every page of the site and a full hreflang mesh. School names remain in English by editorial policy; full localisation of the register follows. Manrope subsets extended with Cyrillic so Russian renders in the brand typeface.
- Pre-launch board additions: a public About & Methodology page - verification process, independence policy and a formal corrections route for schools - and an Arabic welcome page (/ar/) with hreflang links, ahead of full Arabic localisation.
- Interface modernised for 2026 on the brand team’s brief - palette and typeface untouched: sticky solid-white header with animated navigation, large display headline, stat pills, fully rounded buttons and tags with soft elevation, card-style rows, tiers and controls, and refreshed section markers. Native dropdowns replaced with custom-styled selects - white fields, brand-green chevrons and hover states, matching search icon - no more system-grey controls.
- Brand accent unified to deep forest green (#083819) on a pure-white ground - every link, button, rule and mark; the wordmark now sets ‘School’ in the brand colour. Semantic rating-tag colours deliberately unchanged so Outstanding, Very Good and Good stay instantly distinguishable.
- Typeface moved to Manrope (400/700/800, self-hosted, ~46KB) - a screen-first face with stronger numerals for fee scanning - with heading weight raised to extra-bold and tracking retuned. Earlier that day: editorial re-voice (palette, rounded controls, district pins, preview fix). Every school page now carries a district-level OpenStreetMap location pin (honestly labelled) plus geo-coordinates in structured data. The standalone preview file now explains itself and carries its own scripts.
- Launch-day audit: merged a duplicate GEMS FirstPoint entry (and removed its wrong Motor City location), corrected Bloom World Academy to Al Barsha South, unified split area spellings (Jumeira/Jumeirah, Garhoud/Al Garhoud), and added two missing top-tier schools - Dubai British School Emirates Hills (Outstanding) and Royal Grammar School Guildford Dubai (Very Good) - with sourced fees.
- New: a dedicated guide to affordable schools (under AED 20,000), serving the majority of Dubai families that premium-focused guides overlook. Brand de-dated - the year is now a data attribute, never the identity. Build-time integrity guards added: the site now refuses to build if ratings drift above the market’s real tier counts.
- Coverage expanded to 168 schools: 24 rated schools added with sourced locations and ratings (including Dubai English Speaking College, Raffles World Academy, The Winchester School and both Al Ittihad campuses); 53 fee ranges refreshed against current published figures; Jumeirah College and Bilingual French International School locations corrected.
- Every school page now carries a computed ‘In context’ analysis - fee position against curriculum medians, rating-tier context and data-derived alternatives - generated from the verified register, never from opinion.
- Street addresses added for 25 schools where a verifiable source exists (source typos corrected); these now sharpen the Google Maps links and structured data. All other schools keep their verified district-level location - street addresses will be extended from the official KHDA directory rather than guessed.
- Added six confirmed new-campus openings from the regulator’s not-yet-inspected list (Dubai British School Jumeira and Mira, DESS Primary Academic City, GEMS Founders Dubai South, Victory Heights City of Arabia, Lycée Français International Mudon). Coverage expansion to the remaining rated schools is scheduled against the official KHDA directory - no locations will be guessed in the meantime.
- Full ratings reconciliation: every school cross-checked against the complete June 2026 KHDA ratings table. 61 ratings corrected - the register now shows 20 Outstanding, 42 Very Good, 49 Good, 21 Acceptable and 6 not-yet-rated schools, matching the regulator’s published distribution. 26 fee ranges replaced with sourced figures.
- Removed a phantom entry (Al Mawakeb School ‘Al Khail’ - no such branch exists) and added Lycée Libanais Francophone Privé (Meydan), rated Very Good after its 2024-25 post-relocation inspection.
- Register grown to 138 schools: added Emirates International (Jumeirah and Meadows), GEMS FirstPoint, Horizon English, Horizon International and Ambassador International Academy, each with sourced ratings and average fees.
- Very Good tier expanded from 3 to 14 schools after cross-checking listings against the 2023-24 cycle (including the Kings group, GEMS World Academy and both GEMS Wellington Academies); the tier remains under verification against a market total of roughly 28.
- Fee data corrected where sourced averages contradicted listed ranges - notably Dubai College (around AED 101,000), GEMS New Millennium (around AED 26,000, double the previously listed level) and Victory Heights Primary (around AED 49,000). Where a listed range disagreed with a sourced average by more than 20 per cent, the range was removed rather than kept.
- Full register review completed: every school website re-verified against a live domain; 42 dead links replaced with official URLs; 9 unverifiable links removed rather than guessed.
- Clarion School removed - closing at the end of the 2025-26 academic year; its Al Quoz campus reopens as The Scholars School in August 2026.
- Added KHDA-confirmed 2026 openings: Harrow International School Dubai, Rugby School Dubai, Queen Elizabeth’s School Dubai and The Scholars School (no ratings or guessed fees shown).
- Ratings corrected against the 2023-24 DSIB cycle: Victory Heights Primary → Outstanding; Safa British School and Dubai Heights Academy → Very Good; Ranches Primary → Very Good.
- 51 duplicate entries removed; nine wrong locations fixed (including Dubai College → Al Sufouh and Jebel Ali School → Damac Hills); rating scale corrected to KHDA’s real six-point scale.