Education allowance in Dubai, 2026–27: how many schools fit your amount

Set against every tuition fee on the 2026–27 KHDA Fees Fact Sheets, AED 60,000 covers tuition at 178 of the 207 schools that publish a Year 1 / KG2 fee, and at 97 of the 168 that publish a Year 12 / Grade 11 fee. Check three things in your offer: the amount per child per year, how many children it covers, and whether it is for tuition only or also for transport, uniform and other charges.

An education allowance is a benefit in an employment contract. Some employers pay the school directly, others repay the parent against the school's invoice; your HR team will say which. The contract sets how many children it covers and what proof the employer asks for. It is not a government payment. If your offer says «education allowance», «school fees allowance» or «tuition assistance», this page is about that sum.

There is no public register of what Dubai employers pay. Figures quoted online come from HR glossaries and surveys of different years, without a source a family could check, so this guide does not repeat them. It does the reverse: it takes the amount in your offer and shows what it buys at the fees schools actually publish for 2026–27.

The table counts schools whose published 2026–27 tuition for that year group is at or under each amount. The count is cumulative: a school inside AED 30,000 is also inside AED 40,000. Open a year group to see the schools themselves, lowest fee first, and type your own amount in the budget box there.

Read it across a child's route, not down one column. AED 60,000 covers 178 of 207 schools at Year 1 / KG2 and 97 of 168 at Year 12 / Grade 11. AED 40,000 covers 123 at Year 1 and 77 at Year 12. The amount has not changed; the fees have.

The range is wide at every year group. For Year 1 / KG2 the published tuition runs from AED 2,859 to AED 134,000; for Year 7 / Grade 6 from AED 3,276 to AED 161,000; for Year 12 / Grade 11 from AED 7,040 to AED 143,681. An allowance that looks small against the upper end of the range can still cover more than half of the schools at the lower end.

Every other year group, FS2 to Year 11, has its own page with the same budget box: fees by year group. For two children, open the two year groups' pages; this site does not add two fees into one figure.

The curriculum moves the answer as much as the year group does. The chart and the table take two points on the route, the start of secondary and the start of the final two years, and count the same way as the year-group table within each curriculum.

At Year 7 / Grade 6, AED 60,000 covers 50 of 91 British-curriculum schools, 33 of 37 American, 7 of 31 IB and 30 of 30 Indian-curriculum (CBSE) schools that publish a fee. At Year 12 / Grade 11 the same AED 60,000 covers 31 of 70 British, 24 of 33 American, 1 of 29 IB and 27 of 27 CBSE schools.

The IB rows are the ones to read first. At Year 7 / Grade 6, 0 of 31 IB schools publish a tuition at or under AED 30,000 for 2026–27, and only 1 of 29 publish a Year 12 / Grade 11 tuition at or under AED 60,000. Many IB schools also teach another curriculum, so the IB figure for a dual-curriculum school may be a different line on its sheet from the one for its other programme; the school's own Fees Fact Sheet, linked from its profile, shows which.

The curriculum pages list schools by their latest KHDA rating and do not have a budget box. To see the schools behind one cell, use a row of the block at the start of this page, which opens the map with the curriculum and the amount, or ask the assistant.

An allowance set against tuition does not reach the rest of a school's fee sheet. Of the 210 schools whose 2026–27 Fees Fact Sheet this site reads for other costs, 200 list school transport, typically AED 5,500 to 9,225 a year. 188 list a uniform, typically AED 500 to 1,200. 113 list books, typically AED 500 to 1,000.

Transport is the largest of these items. A Year 7 / Grade 6 tuition that sits just inside AED 40,000 becomes AED 45,500 to 49,225 once a school bus is added at the typical range; an allowance written for tuition does not reach that line. Trips, exams, after-school activities and a device are listed separately, where a school charges them, and are not in any count on this page.

The full list of items, how many schools charge each and the typical range is on what families pay besides tuition. For one school, the figures are on its own Fees Fact Sheet, linked from its profile on this site.

Where an allowance is a yearly sum, it meets a school chosen for ten or more years. The chart shows what happens across that time: at Year 1 / KG2, 29 of 207 schools publish a 2026–27 tuition above AED 60,000; at Year 12 / Grade 11 it is 71 of 168. A fee inside the allowance in the first year can sit above it by the last.

The cost planner works this out for one child. Choose the year group and the start year, enter what you can spend a year or in total, and it checks each school's own fees from that year group to the school's last year group, adding the mandatory items on its fee sheet and allowing for a rise each year at the latest Education Cost Index. It then sorts schools into those that fit, those that fit only if fees rise slowly, those above the budget, and those that end before the final year. The budget field already says «Include any education allowance from an employer».

Two limits are worth knowing. The planner takes one child at a time, so for two children run it twice and add the totals yourself. And it works with a fixed sum, not a share: an allowance written as a percentage of fees, or as «up to» a cap with the rest paid by the family, has to be turned into a yearly amount before it goes in. The planner also does not check a yearly cap year by year; a school can fit the total while one of its senior years goes over the yearly allowance, so for a per-year cap read the Year 12 / Grade 11 and Year 13 / Grade 12 rows of the year-group table as well.