Every year around April, the email arrives: "School fees will increase by X% from August." Parents see the number and assume the school just picks it. They don't. KHDA's Education Cost Index (ECI) sets the hard ceiling, and the ceiling depends on the school's last KHDA rating.
How the cap is calculated
The ECI is a basket of education-related costs (salaries, rent, utilities, curriculum licensing) that KHDA publishes each year. A school's maximum allowed increase is a multiple of ECI, with the multiple determined by KHDA rating:
| KHDA Rating | Max fee increase |
|---|---|
| Outstanding | Up to 2 × ECI |
| Very Good | Up to 1.75 × ECI |
| Good | Up to 1.5 × ECI |
| Acceptable | Up to 1 × ECI |
| Weak | No increase permitted |
This is a ceiling, not a floor. A school rated Outstanding can choose to raise fees by 0%. They rarely do, but they can.
The 2026-27 number
KHDA sets the annual ECI percentage in its circular to schools, normally published in April. The multiple then applied gives you the maximum permitted increase for your child's school.
Check your school's rating on its DubaiSchools.ai page and multiply against the published ECI to sanity-check any letter you receive. If the proposed increase exceeds the formula for your rating band, the school has to file a special justification with KHDA — and you can escalate.
Why some schools increase every year and others don't
Three factors in practice:
- Demand pressure. A school with a long waitlist can max out the cap without losing a single family. A school with empty classrooms cannot.
- Recent renovations or new buildings. KHDA permits one-time additional increases linked to verifiable capex (new facilities, teaching staff uplift, accreditation costs).
- Corporate strategy. Multi-school groups often raise in lockstep even if some campuses have spare capacity, to maintain brand positioning.
What to check in the letter
- The percentage quoted. Does it match the ECI × your school's rating multiple?
- The base it applies to. Some schools add the increase on top of last year's discounted fee, others on top of the list fee — the difference can be 5-10%.
- Fee categories. Tuition is capped. "Books and technology", "activity fees", and "examination fees" are sometimes not capped in the same way. Watch for increases in those line items.
- Sibling and early-payment discounts. Schools occasionally quietly reduce these at the same time as raising base fees, netting more than the cap implies.
If the increase looks wrong
Write to the school finance office asking for:
- The ECI figure used
- The multiple used (which should match the school's current KHDA rating)
- The exact fee base last year and the new base
If the arithmetic doesn't check out, escalate to KHDA via their parent portal. They take fee complaints seriously and have forced reversals before.
Budgeting realistically for 2026-27
The median Dubai private school fee is currently around AED 33,000 per year. A 3-5% increase at that level is AED 1,000-1,650. Not nothing, but not catastrophic. The schools that make headlines for bigger increases are almost always Outstanding-rated schools running at 100% capacity — and even there, the cap is still binding.
If 2026-27 fees push your family past a threshold, affordable Dubai schools with decent KHDA ratings do exist. Shortlist three alternatives now, assess over summer, and have a move-ready plan before the autumn term if you need one.