Insights · September 2026
KHDA inspections are back: what changes for Dubai’s school ratings
KHDA's visits resume in 2026–27. A full inspection brings a new rating; a shorter monitoring visit does not. Until new reports are published, 197 of the 207 rated schools on this site hold a rating from 2023–24, after two years without full inspections.
Data: KHDA Full Inspection Reports 2016–17 to 2025–26, KHDA Education Directory 2025–26 and KHDA news of 3 June 2026; checked 24 September 2026.
Two years without full inspections
In 2023–24, KHDA reports gave 203 schools on this site an overall rating. In the two school years after it, 4 and 5 schools were rated: KHDA paused full inspections, and only schools in their third year were inspected.
«Dubai’s Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA) has announced that no inspections will be conducted for Dubai private schools during the 2025-26 academic year.»
«applies to all private schools, except for those in their third year of operation, who will be subject to a full inspection.»
Source KHDA news, 16 May 2025 (opens in a new tab)
203 schools were given a KHDA rating in 2023–24; 4 in 2024–25 and 5 in 2025–26
Schools on this site given an overall rating by a KHDA Full Inspection Report, by the school year of the report: the 228 schools open in 2025–26 and 10 that have since closed. Axis starts at zero.
KHDA Full Inspection Reports, 2016–17 to 2025–26. Checked 24 September 2026.
KHDA did not inspect schools in 2020–21 and inspected only a few in 2021–22. In 2024–25 and 2025–26 full inspections were paused; the ratings in those years are the first inspections of schools in their third year.
What the last ratings said
Because of the pause, the rating a family sees today is, for most schools, the one given in 2023–24: 197 of the 207 rated schools hold a rating from 2023–24. This is how Dubai’s open schools stand today.
Good is the most common rating today: 85 of 207 rated schools
Dubai’s 228 open schools, each once, by the latest overall rating it holds today (24 September 2026); 21 hold no six-level rating yet (not yet inspected, or an older four-level report). Axis starts at zero.
KHDA Full Inspection Reports and Education Directory, 2025–26. Checked 24 September 2026.
155 of the 207 rated schools are Good or better, and 52 are Acceptable. None is rated Weak or Very weak.
What to expect and when
On 3 June 2026 KHDA announced the two kinds of visit:
«Dubai’s Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA) has announced the resumption of quality assurance visits for private schools across the emirate from the 2026-27 academic year»
«The first is a full quality assurance visit, or inspection, conducted by a team of specialist experts applying the full UAE School Inspection Framework. A comprehensive inspection report, including an overall school rating, will be published after the visit.»
«The second is a shorter monitoring visit conducted by a smaller team of visiting experts, focusing on specific audit trails and key lines of enquiry identified through data analysis. Following the visit, schools will receive a concise report outlining strengths and recommendations for improvement, but no new overall inspection rating will be issued.»
«For both types of visits, schools will receive no more than 24 hours’ notice.»
Source KHDA news, 3 June 2026 (opens in a new tab)
After a monitoring visit a school receives a short report of strengths and recommendations, and keeps the rating it has. Schools completing their third year of operation are given a full inspection; for other schools, KHDA chooses the kind of visit from its own data.
KHDA gives no dates for the new reports. A report is published after its visit, and until then the school’s rating on this site stays the one from its last report, with that report’s year.
How to read a rating that is three years old
A rating from 2023–24 describes the school as the inspectors found it then. Read it together with its year: leaders, teachers and results may have changed since.
Look at the school’s earlier reports too. A rating that held across several reports says more than one report alone, and each school page on this site shows the ratings of its earlier reports under History.
What each of the six levels means, in the inspection framework’s own words, is in What KHDA ratings mean.
Method
- Schools: the 238 schools in our data, the 228 open in 2025–26 and 10 that have since closed. A school that closed before our data begins is not in it, so the early years count fewer schools than KHDA inspected then.
- The first chart counts, for each school year, the schools given an overall rating by a KHDA Full Inspection Report of that year. A rating that KHDA’s directory files under a year with no report behind it is not counted.
- The second chart counts each of Dubai’s 228 open schools once, by the latest overall rating it holds today, the rule Market Statistics uses. A school with no six-level rating (not yet inspected, or an older four-level report) is shown apart, never as weak.
- Nothing is estimated: a year with no inspections is named in words, not drawn as a gap. Nationality mix and fees play no part in these counts.
- Sources: KHDA Full Inspection Reports 2016–17 to 2025–26; KHDA Education Directory 2025–26; KHDA news of 16 May 2025 and 3 June 2026. Checked 24 September 2026.
See the data
- Ratings by level, year by year, on Market StatisticsThe same rule, year by year up to 2024–25, by area and by curriculum, with the table and the CSV.
- Rating changes between reports, on Market StatisticsWhich schools moved up or down from one report to the next.
- About the dataWhere every figure comes from and how it is counted.
Sources
- KHDA to resume quality assurance visits for Dubai private schools (opens in a new tab)KHDA news, 3 June 2026. KHDA's visits resume in 2026–27. A full inspection brings a new rating; a shorter monitoring visit does not.
- KHDA announces pause on school inspections for 2025-26 academic year (opens in a new tab)KHDA news, 16 May 2025: no inspections in 2025–26, except for schools in their third year.
- KHDA Education Directory and Full Inspection Reports (opens in a new tab)Each school’s reports, 2016–17 to 2025–26, and its directory page, 2025–26. Checked 24 September 2026.
Every sentence in quotation marks on this page was checked word for word against its document on 24 September 2026.