How to find schools near where you will live in Dubai

KHDA files every school under an official area, and that name often differs from the one in a property listing. Dubai Marina, JBR, Downtown and Business Bay are not KHDA school areas at all, while a school in Al Barsha or Dubai Hills may be filed under a neighbouring area's name.

A KHDA area is the district KHDA names in its school register. A community is the name a developer or a landlord uses, so look up the KHDA name before you search.

If your community is not listed here, type its name into the Finder on the home page. It knows malls, parks, metro stations, hospitals and beaches as well as areas; if the name is not found, choose the nearest landmark you can see on a map of the development.

Open Schools near me and choose one of its 64 areas and landmarks. It lists the 10 nearest private schools with their straight-line distance and their latest KHDA rating with its year. A curriculum filter narrows the list to British, American, IB or CBSE schools.

When you pick an area, the distance runs from the centre of that area's schools. When you pick a landmark, it runs from a fixed point there, for example the Business Bay metro station.

Two rings on the «Schools near» pages

The «Schools near …» pages list the schools within 3 km and from 3 to 5 km of one point. They exist for places families often name but where few or no schools stand, so every family there travels out to school. Read the inner ring first, then the outer one.

To see the ring on a map, open the Finder with a place set, for example DIFC within 3 km. Every pin on that map is a school in the ring, and the link keeps the ring when you send it to someone.

A school three kilometres away with a bus to your community can be easier than a school two kilometres away with no bus. Schools publish their own bus zones, and the site shows those words on each school's profile.

Open the school's profile from the list and look for its transport facts. They are quoted from the school's website with the date they were read; they are the school's own words, not part of a KHDA inspection report. Bus routes and fees can change each year, so confirm with the school.

The area guides collect what the schools of one area publish in a section on school buses, quoted from each school's website. This guide states no travel times, because the site does not measure them; the Finder's «An estimate by car» is marked as an estimate.

Work out which year group your child joins in September, then read the fee for that year group and that year only. Dubai schools price every year group separately, so a school's average fee tells you very little.

1. Enter your child's date of birth in Which year group; the year-group guide explains how British, American, IB and Indian systems count the years.
2. Each school's profile has a fees page with a row for every year group in 2026–27. One year group across all schools is on pages such as Year 1 fees.
3. The cost planner adds up every year from your child's year group to the school's last, at each school's 2026–27 fees, and shows which schools fit your total budget.

A fee on this site is tuition for one year group and one school year, as KHDA approved it. Bus, uniform and registration fees are charged separately, and the school's own fee sheet is the final word.

Every KHDA rating on the site carries its inspection year; read the two together. A rating describes the school as inspectors found it in that cycle, so an Outstanding from an older cycle is not the same evidence as one from the latest cycle.

KHDA rates on a six-point scale from «Outstanding» down to «Very weak», and «Good or better» groups the three ratings from «Good» upwards. The KHDA ratings guide explains each level.

When two schools near you carry the same rating, read the inspection findings on each profile. The quoted lines, with their page in the report, show what inspectors praised and what they asked the school to improve.

Save each school you want to keep, then compare two or three of them on one page. Saved schools stay on your phone, so the list carries from one evening to the next.

1. Save the school from its profile or from a list.
2. Open Compare: fees come first, then the KHDA rating with its year and the curriculum.
3. Read Applying to a Dubai school for the documents and the timing, then write to the schools about places in your child's year group.

For 6 parts of Dubai the work above is already written up as an area guide, with fees by year group and the bus zones each school publishes. For 5 places with few or no schools inside, a «Schools near …» page gives the two rings.

Every area with 3 or more private schools has its own page, 32 in all, listed under «Schools by area» on Schools near me.