Dubai has 227 private schools in the KHDA directory, spread across 78 community labels. In the same city, 9,956 homes sold in August 2026. Only 15.9 per cent of those sales happened in a community that has a KHDA inspected school in it. The other 84.1 per cent happened where there is no school at all.
Put the other way round: 171 of the 227 schools sit in a community where not one home changed hands all month. Dubai is buying homes in one set of districts and schooling its children in another.
Everything below is calculated from two official sources. The ratings are KHDA’s own published inspection results. The prices are the Dubai Land Department transaction register. We did the arithmetic ourselves and we publish no opinion about which school is best.
Every KHDA rating, counted
| Overall rating | Schools | Share of all 227 |
|---|---|---|
| Outstanding | 23 | 10.1% |
| Very good | 48 | 21.1% |
| Good | 84 | 37.0% |
| Acceptable | 52 | 22.9% |
| Not inspected yet | 20 | 8.8% |
Of the 207 schools carrying a rating, 155 are rated Good or better. That is 74.9 per cent. Not one school in the directory is rated Weak or Very Weak. The weakest rating in use across the whole of Dubai private education today is Acceptable, and 52 schools hold it.
The 20 schools with no rating are new. KHDA lists them but has not inspected them yet, so there is nothing to publish about them and we make no guess.
Where the schools are, and where the buying is
We matched KHDA community labels to Dubai Land Department area labels. Only 19 communities have both a KHDA school and a registered home sale in August 2026. Those 19 communities hold 56 schools and 1,585 of the month’s sales.
| Community | Schools | Outstanding | Very good | Good | Acceptable | Home sales | Median per sq ft | Median price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jumeirah Village Circle | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 688 | AED 1,429 | AED 1,018,500 |
| Jabal Ali First | 4 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 1 | 175 | AED 1,698 | AED 1,787,529 |
| Dubai Sports City | 5 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 148 | AED 1,282 | AED 887,380 |
| Al Furjan | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 142 | AED 1,351 | AED 1,180,000 |
| Silicon Oasis | 3 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 134 | AED 1,104 | AED 870,870 |
| Motor City | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 84 | AED 1,687 | AED 1,425,000 |
| Dubai Investment Park First | 6 | 0 | 1 | 3 | 2 | 72 | AED 958 | AED 556,678 |
| Al Satwa | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 43 | AED 2,130 | AED 1,408,288 |
| Al Wasl | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 42 | AED 3,191 | AED 2,813,500 |
| Mirdif | 4 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 16 | AED 1,320 | AED 1,913,700 |
| Um Suqaim Third | 4 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 11 | AED 2,663 | AED 3,000,000 |
| Al Barsha First | 5 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 6 | AED 1,800 | AED 2,009,453 |
| Nad Al Hamar | 2 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 6 | AED 1,073 | AED 1,445,000 |
| Nad Al Shiba First | 2 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 5 | AED 2,017 | AED 1,650,000 |
| Jumeirah Second | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 5 | AED 9,544 | AED 44,398,000 |
| Jumeirah First | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 3 | AED 8,180 | AED 16,705,000 |
| Al Barari | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 2 | AED 2,882 | AED 3,509,608 |
| Mudon | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | AED 1,491 | AED 1,250,000 |
| Muhaisanah First | 7 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 5 | 1 | AED 1,541 | AED 2,450,000 |
Jumeirah Village Circle is the clearest case. It is the busiest community on this table by a wide margin, with 688 registered home sales in August, and the KHDA directory lists 2 schools there. Both are rated Very good. Neither is rated Outstanding. Two larger selling districts, Madinat Al Mataar and City Of Arabia, have no KHDA listed school at all.
Homes near schools cost less per square foot, not more
| Measure | Communities with a school | Everywhere else |
|---|---|---|
| Home sales | 1,585 | 8,371 |
| Share of the month | 15.9% | 84.1% |
| Median AED per sq ft | AED 1,452 | AED 1,746 |
| Off plan share | 58.0% | 77.0% |
Homes in communities with a school sold at a median of AED 1,452 per square foot. Everywhere else the median was AED 1,746. That is 16.8 per cent lower where the schools are. This runs against the usual claim that a good school lifts nearby prices.
The reason is in the last row. Communities with schools were 58.0 per cent off plan. Everywhere else was 77.0 per cent. Schools sit in districts that were built years ago and now trade as resale. The new launch districts carrying most of Dubai’s volume have not been built long enough to have a school in them yet. What the table measures is the age of a district, not the value of a classroom.
The 23 Outstanding schools are almost never where homes are selling
Of the 23 schools rated Outstanding, only 4 sit in a community that registered a home sale in August 2026. They are in Dubai Sports City, Al Wasl, Umm Suqeim Third and Nadd Al Shiba First, one school each. The other 19 are in Oud Metha, Al Barsha Second, Al Safa First, Al Safouh First, Al Barsha South First, Emirates Hills, Arabian Ranches, Academic City, Nadd Al Shiba Third, Jumeira Third, Dubai Festival City and Jumeirah Park, none of which registered a qualifying sale that month.
If you are buying a home this month and you want an Outstanding school inside your own community, the register says the choice is very small. That is a statement about one month of transactions, not about the schools.
Most of these ratings are two years old
This is the caveat that matters most and almost nobody states it. Of the 227 schools listed, 197 carry an overall rating from the 2023 to 2024 inspection cycle. Only 5 carry a 2025 to 2026 rating and 4 carry a 2024 to 2025 rating. One still shows 2019 to 2020.
So the KHDA directory is current as a directory, but the rating attached to most schools describes an inspection carried out two academic years ago. A school can have changed a great deal since. Read the rating as the date it was given, not as today.
Frequently asked questions
How many Dubai private schools are rated Outstanding?
23 of the 227 schools in the KHDA directory hold an Outstanding overall rating. A further 48 are Very good and 84 are Good.
Are any Dubai schools rated Weak?
No. No school in the KHDA directory currently carries a Weak or Very Weak overall rating. The lowest rating in use is Acceptable, held by 52 schools.
Do homes near good schools cost more in Dubai?
Not in the August 2026 register. Communities containing a KHDA inspected school had a median of AED 1,452 per square foot against AED 1,746 elsewhere, which is 16.8 per cent lower. The gap reflects the age of those districts rather than the schools themselves, because school communities were 58.0 per cent off plan against 77.0 per cent elsewhere.
Which community has the most schools and the most sales?
Among communities that have both, Jumeirah Village Circle, with 2 schools and 688 registered home sales in August 2026 at a median of AED 1,429 per square foot. Dubai’s two busiest selling districts that month, Madinat Al Mataar and City Of Arabia, have no KHDA listed school.
Method and limits
Sources. School names, overall ratings, wellbeing ratings, inclusion ratings and community labels come from the KHDA education directory at web.khda.gov.ae, read on 28 September 2026, covering all 227 listed private schools. Prices come from the Dubai Land Department transaction register for August 2026, downloaded on 2 September 2026, 15,955 rows.
Price basis. Sales only, residential usage only, property type Unit, priced at or above AED 500 per square foot. That is the standard basis used across this site and it leaves 9,956 sales, with a citywide median of AED 1,108,207 and AED 1,708 per square foot. Villas register as Building rather than Unit, so villa sales are not in these counts.
How we matched communities. KHDA and the Land Department use different labels for the same places. We matched only where the two clearly mean the same community, including eight spelling variants such as Muhaisnah against Muhaisanah, Umm Suqeim Third against Um Suqaim Third, Dubai Silicon Oasis against Silicon Oasis, Jumeira First against Jumeirah First, and Nadd Al Hamar against Nad Al Hamar. We did not force a match where the two labels describe different sectors. Where KHDA names a sub sector the register does not carry, the school is counted as unmatched.
What that leaves out. 59 of the 78 KHDA community labels had no qualifying home sale in August 2026, so 171 schools sit outside every price table here. That is the finding, not a gap in the data. It does mean no price is shown for those communities.
Rating currency. Ratings are KHDA’s published overall rating and carry the inspection cycle KHDA attaches to them. Most are from 2023 to 2024. We publish the rating and the cycle and we add no judgement of our own.
Limits. One month of transactions is a small window and several communities in the table rest on fewer than ten sales. A community label is not a catchment area, and Dubai children routinely travel to school across the city, so the absence of a school in a community does not mean children there have no school. Fees, distance, transport and admission are not in either dataset. This is not school advice and it is not a ranking.