The Price of Education: School Fees in Dubai Explained

Dubai School Fees. We unpack how Dubai’s KHDA sets the 2.35% education cost index for 2025–2026, what’s inside the official framework, and why the pause on most inspections changes the usual link between performance and price. Along the way, we translate policy into plain language so families can build a realistic budget—and schools can communicate value without jargon.

We start by separating tuition from non-tuition costs, because the headline number rarely tells the whole story. Tuition is regulated; many extras are not. That difference matters when you add uniforms, transport, devices, trips, and activities to your annual bill. We walk through the KHDA school fees fact sheet—your best source for verified tuition, mandatory extras, and any discounts or scholarships—and show how to turn it into a total cost of education you can actually plan for. For parents running the numbers, we map a simple example to show how a 2.35% rise compounds across two children and where to look for hidden costs before re-enrolment.

We also explore the school-side pressures: teacher salaries, facilities, maintenance, and support services all climb with inflation. Some schools may tap the cap; others may freeze fees to build trust in a competitive market. The difference comes down to transparency—explaining not just how much fees change, but why. We offer a checklist of questions to ask: What improvements land this year? How are non-tuition items managed? Will the school share a clear breakdown of cost drivers? And once inspections resume, will performance once again shape allowable increases?

By the end, you’ll know how to read a fee fact sheet, compare schools on true cost, and ask for specifics that tie price to student experience—smaller ratios, stronger teaching, better resources, and clearer communication. If this helped you plan smarter or see your options more clearly, follow the show, share it with a friend, and leave a quick review so more families in Dubai can make informed choices.

All the information from this episode was taken from the following sources. 

KHDA. (2025, August). KHDA sets 2.35% Education Cost Index for Dubai private schools 2025–26. Retrieved from KHDA

KHDA. (n.d.). School Fees Fact Sheet FAQs. Retrieved from KHDA

KHDA. (2023, March). School Fees Fact Sheet enables parents to make better decisions. Retrieved from KHDA

KHDA. (n.d.). Guidelines for Private Schools (Exceptional Fee Increases). Retrieved from KHDA PDF

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting the Fees Question
• 0:50 KHDA, ECI, and What’s Regulated
• 2:26 Inspections Pause and Implications
• 3:18 How the Index Is Calculated
• 4:22 Stakeholder Impact: Parents
• 5:16 Stakeholder Impact: Schools
• 6:00 What to Watch and Ask
• 7:29 Fact Sheets and Transparency
• 8:18 Final Takeaways and Next Steps

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

School fees might increase by 2.35%. All schools have to release a fact sheet about how much things cost in terms of tuition and those additional extras. How will those fee increases affect your family? Is this sustainable, do you think? Hi, I'm Chris Shropsov and welcome to School Talk, the podcast where we have meaningful conversations about education, learning, and those issues that matter most to students, to parents and the teachers. With over 10 years' experience in international schools, I've seen firsthand the challenges but also the opportunities in learning today. Each week I'll sit down with inspiring guests to share stories, insights, and strategies on how we can help shape the future of education. Whether you're here to grow, to learn, or to spark change, this is the place for you. So let's get started. Welcome back to the School Talk Podcast. Today we're diving into one of the most talked-about topics with parents and teachers in Dubai, and that's school fees. How are they set, who regulates them, and when are schools allowed to raise those school fees as well? So in 2025-2026, Dubai's KHDA has approved a 2.35% education cost index for private schools, which pretty much means schools might be able to raise their fees by up to 2.35% for next academic year. Now, KHA, first of all, oversees quality, but it also regulates tuition fees and certain mandatory fees at private schools via a formal framework. And within that framework, you've got your tuition fees but also your non-tuition costs. And your tuition fees would cover things like the actual day-to-day academic learning that you get from teachers, from faculty, whereas your non-tuition costs, they're things like transport, uniform, trips, extracurricular, things like that. Now the non-tuition costs they're generally not regulated by KHDA, so that would be a school-by-school basis. However, going back to the tuition fees, that is what is regulated by KHDA. To find out the tuition costs of your school, every school must publish a schools fees fact sheet for each academic year. And this lists all the verified fees, so your tuition and any mandatory extras and discounts or scholarships. So if you go on there, you can see how much school fees cost for any given year, and if any extras are needed, how much they will cost as well. Now, another crucial part of this is the inspection rating. So in previous years, how a school performed in their inspections, so via the Device Schools Inspection Bureau, which you might have heard the DSIB, that influenced how much of a fee increase that the school could apply for. So if you maintained your rating or you improved your rating, then the KHGA would use the education cost index to look at increasing school fees. However, in 2025-2026, there's a bit of a twist because inspections are paused for most schools. So meaning the usual performance-based fee increase paths are temporarily been altered. Now I don't have any confirmed information about how that looks, so I'm not going to comment any more on that. What I will talk you through is how the education cost index works. So it effectively is KHDA's benchmark for allowable fee increases for the 2025-2026. And that ceiling is 2.35% for those for-profit schools. This figure comes from KHDA auditing financials submitted by schools, capturing their real operational costs, teacher salaries, utilities, rent, support services, things like that. Now, schools that have been operating less than three years are not eligible to apply for a fee increase via this index. So if your children go to a school that's been open less than three years, then the fees will not be increasing next year. And there's also been some cases where schools have had the opportunity to raise fees, but they haven't raised fees. So that again, from a parent perspective, is very, very good news. And it just shows that they are taking into consideration the cost of living here at the moment. Now, some of the stuff I have discussed today, I will put all the links to where I've got that information from, just so if you want to go and check it out, then you can have a look and see where my information is coming from. So let's break this down by different stakeholders. So to begin with, for parents and for families, even a 2.35 raise can add a lot of money to your already tight budget. So if we work to the example of you pay 60,000 dirums a year and you've got two children, so you're paying 120,000 dirhams nutritions fees, school fees, then you've got that 2.35% increase, which per child is 1,500 or 1400 dirhams per year, times that by two thousand eight hundred and twenty dirh. So in that increase for two children, you're paying an extra two thousand eight hundred dirhum a year, which can get tricky. Like these things are expensive, so yes, from a parent perspective, it's going to cost you more money, and can you budget that effectively? Now we've looked at it from a parent perspective. Let's look at it from a school perspective. As we've said before, the cost of living is going up. So that's for us as families, but also schools as well. The wages will increase, the maintenance costs, technology costs will all increase. So these increase in fees will help cover those costs. But then on the flip side, it also adds pressure to the schools to justify the increase. As a parent, if you're paying an extra 2,400 durham on top of your what you were paying last year, you want to see visible value being added. You want those facilities to be better, you want the quality of teachers to be better, you want the resources to be better. So there is definitely a pressure from the school side as well. So, some insight from my side. What to watch and what questions should you be asking? So, going forward, here are some things that I would monitor and some questions for parents to ask. So, first of all, will KHDA revert to that performance-based fee increase once inspections are resumed? So, once those inspections are back, and say if schools maintain their rating, will those fee increases be in line with that? Will some schools potentially freeze those fee increases to maintain kind of goodwill within the community and that competitive edge? We are in a very competitive market here with education. So if you know that your school fees are going to be frozen for the next three years, that could be a reason why you join a school. That's from a parent side. If you're looking now from a school side, will schools be transparent about their increases to parents? They'll tell you how much they are, but will they tell you why they're going up that amount? Are they going to be transparent with those breakdowns? I think from a parent perspective, what I would do is find the school's fees fact sheet. The school might publish this to you, but if not, go onto the KHDA website, and there's every single school with a fact sheet for this year and next year. So I'll put that link in the show notes as well. Some really inf interesting information that you can find out from the different schools there in terms of fees. I think to round up, the buyer school fees are not a free-for-all. They are very strictly governed by KHDA and through the KHDA school fees framework. As I said, in 2025-2026, that framework permits a 2.35 increase, and some schools might use it, some schools won't. And the balance between affordability and sustainability will be the big conversation topic around it, let's say. I think for me, the best thing you can do as a parent if you're concerned or want to find out more information about school fees is go onto the KHDA website and look at those fact sheets because there you'll find that how much tuition costs itself. But then remember, it's not just the tuition fees you're going to pay for. There might be additional uniform you need, there might be additional technology you need, school trips, all the things like that that are additional to school fees. So go onto their websites, ask questions to the KHDA, ask questions to the school. If you're going on tours and things, these are information that you can find out. Um but yeah, just ask questions. I think that's the best thing you can do. Anyway, I hope this helps. This is last week's episode about uh what did we talk about last week? Last week we talked about the number of new schools, and this week we're talking about school fees. So if you find this episode interesting or useful or you think someone might learn from it, share it with them and we'll continue to grow. My name is Chris Schroepsoul. This has been School Talk. Thank you so much for listening. Bye for now.