Insights · September 2026
Half of Dubai's Year 5 fees are under AED 34,871, and Good ratings appear at every price
For the same year group — Year 5, or Grade 4 in American and Indian schools — 210 Dubai private schools publish 2026–27 tuition from AED 3,128 to AED 152,000. Half charge under AED 34,871. Schools rated Good or better appear in every fee band.
Data: KHDA Fees Fact Sheets 2026–27 for the 217 schools that publish one, and each school's latest KHDA inspection rating; checked 24 September 2026.
The price ladder
Line up the 210 schools that publish a Year 5 / Grade 4 fee for 2026–27: the middle fee is AED 34,871 — half the schools charge less, half more. The middle half of the schools charge between AED 17,172 and AED 58,374.
The ends are far apart. The lowest fee is AED 3,128 at Crescent English School. The highest, AED 152,000, is at GEMS School of Research and Innovation, which opened recently and has not yet been inspected by KHDA. Among schools that hold a rating, the highest fee is AED 108,314 at North London Collegiate School Middle East (Very good) — about 35 times the lowest.
Where the ratings sit on it
Each dot below is one school, placed by its Year 5 fee and grouped by its latest KHDA rating. Most ratings date from the 2023–24 inspection cycle; KHDA inspections resume in 2026–27, so a school may have changed since. The groups overlap along most of the ladder: a rating is not a price band.
Year 5 fees overlap across KHDA ratings; half the schools charge under AED 34,871
The 210 Dubai private schools that publish 2026–27 tuition for Year 5 / Grade 4, one dot each, by their latest KHDA overall rating. Tuition only, AED a year.
KHDA Fees Fact Sheets 2026–27 and KHDA inspection reports; checked 24 September 2026.
The dark rule in each row is its median; the dashed rule is the median of all schools. «Not yet inspected» schools have no rating yet; most opened recently.
Grouped into the same fee bands as our fee pages, the share of schools rated Good or better is lowest under AED 10,000: 37% of 27. Above AED 50,000 it is 82% (64 of 78). The 17 schools not yet inspected are counted as not Good or better, which lowers the share most where new schools open — mostly above AED 50,000.
82% of schools charging over AED 50,000 for Year 5 are rated Good or better; 37% of those charging under AED 10,000
Schools rated Good, Very good or Outstanding as a share of the schools in each fee band, Year 5 / Grade 4 tuition, 2026–27. Schools not yet inspected are in the count and not Good or better. Axis starts at zero.
KHDA Fees Fact Sheets 2026–27 and KHDA inspection reports; checked 24 September 2026.
Each bar says how many schools it counts: a share of a few schools moves a lot with one school.
Good ratings at low fees
34 schools charging under AED 20,000 for Year 5 / Grade 4 are rated Good or better. The five lowest fees among them: The Indian High School – Al Garhoud, AED 5,525 (Good); New Indian Model School, AED 5,536 (Good); Gulf Indian High School, AED 5,805 (Good); GEMS Our Own Indian School, AED 8,250 (Very good); St. Mary's Catholic High School, AED 9,030 (Good).
The lowest Year 5 fee at a school rated Outstanding is AED 35,385, at Lycée Français International – Oud Metha.
Every school, its fee and its rating are listed on Year 5 school fees in Dubai, cheapest first, with a budget field.
Compare within a curriculum
The middle fee differs a lot by curriculum: British AED 50,099 (99 schools); American AED 32,217 (37 schools); IB AED 64,464 (31 schools); Indian CBSE AED 13,963 (30 schools); MOE AED 9,215 (8 schools); French AED 50,841 (7 schools).
These are not like-for-like. Curricula serve different communities, with different class sizes, staff and campuses, and a school teaching two curricula counts under both. Compare a school with others of its own curriculum — the curriculum pages list them by rating, with the fee of one named year group.
What the fee leaves out
These are tuition fees only. Uniforms, books, transport, trips, exam fees and registration deposits are extra, and they add up differently at every school. School costs works out the whole cost of a school to the final year.
Method
- Fees: tuition for one year group in 2026–27, as each school's KHDA Fees Fact Sheet publishes it, for the 210 of 217 schools with a sheet that publish this year group. Checked 24 September 2026; changes KHDA published after that day are not included.
- Year group: Year 5 in British and IB schools is Grade 4 in American, Indian and MOE schools and CM1 in French ones — the same year of schooling, matched by KHDA's grade table.
- Ratings: each school's latest KHDA overall judgement; most are from the 2023–24 cycle, and inspections resume in 2026–27. 17 schools are not yet inspected; they are counted as not Good or better.
- Counts: medians and quartiles over schools, not pupils — a large school counts once, as a small one does. A band holds fees from its lower limit up to its upper one; a fee of exactly AED 75,000 is in «AED 50,000–75,000», and «Over AED 75,000» starts above it.
- Every number here can be checked school by school on the Year 5 fee page. Dubai School Atlas is independent and not affiliated with KHDA.
See the data
- Year 5 school fees in DubaiAll 210 schools, their fee and rating, cheapest first
- Fees on Market StatisticsFees by year group, curriculum and area, over the years
- School costsThe whole cost of a school to the final year
Sources
- KHDA Fees Fact Sheets (opens in a new tab)Each school's published tuition by year group, 2026–27
- KHDA inspection reports (opens in a new tab)Each school's latest overall rating, in the KHDA Education Directory