DubaiSchools.ai parent data guide

Published 1 November 2026 · Analysis of the DubaiSchools.ai school dataset

Care Above Teaching: What the Separate KHDA Judgements Reveal About Dubai Schools

A KHDA rating is one word, but it sits on top of several separate judgements. Line them up and a pattern jumps out. The teaching judgement and the overall grade are almost the same thing, matching at 107 of 110 schools. Care and personal development, meanwhile, usually sit a step above it. For many families that means the headline grade understates how well a school looks after children.

The headline grade is really the teaching grade

For each standard we compared the school’s judgement with its overall KHDA rating. Teaching and assessment almost never differs from the headline: it is lower at 0 and higher at 3 of 110 schools. That is consistent with an inspection framework that puts learning at the centre of the overall judgement. It also means a parent reading “Good” is, in effect, reading the verdict on classroom teaching.

Standard below the overall gradeSame as overallAbove the overall grade

Care and personal development run ahead

Protection, care and support is rated above the overall grade at 72% of schools, and personal and social development at 83%. Comparing the two judgements directly, care beats teaching at 64 of 107 schools. Not one school is rated lower for care than for teaching. At 14 schools, care is two full grades higher.

This matters most at the lower end of the scale. Of the 25 Acceptable-rated schools with both judgements, 16 are rated Good or better for care. An “Acceptable” label can describe a school where children are safe, known and well supported, but where teaching has not yet caught up.

Inside leadership: strong with parents, weaker at judging themselves

KHDA splits leadership into four parts. Partnership with parents is the strongest, rated Very good or Outstanding at 71% of 199 schools, and no school is rated Weak. Self-evaluation and planning is the weakest, at 37%. Self-evaluation is the part most often rated Weak, at 10 schools.

That combination is worth sitting with. Schools are, on the whole, good at talking to parents. They are less good at seeing themselves accurately, which is the step that has to come before any improvement plan works. It echoes what KHDA writes in its recommendations: 39% of schools are asked to improve self-evaluation or improvement planning.

Three questions this raises for a school visit

• If care is rated above teaching: what is the plan for teaching, and what has changed since the inspection?
• If teaching is strong but self-evaluation is weak: how do leaders know which classes are not yet good?
• For any school: which of the judgements matters most for your child’s next three years, and does the evidence support it?

Sources and method

Standard-level judgements come from KHDA inspection fields in DubaiSchools.ai’s open dataset, compared with each school’s current overall KHDA rating on KHDA’s five-point scale from Weak to Outstanding. Each comparison uses every rated school with a published judgement for that standard, so samples differ. The students’ achievement standard is not included because it is not held as a single judgement in the dataset. Leadership parts include all schools with a published judgement for that part. The analysis is descriptive. See the methodology and the KHDA ratings guide.