What KHDA Tells Dubai Schools to Fix: 698 Inspection Recommendations, Read Together

Every KHDA inspection report ends with a short list of things the school must do next. We read all 698 recommendations in the latest published reports of 210 rated Dubai private schools. The list is surprisingly consistent, and it changes character as the rating rises. At the top, the most common instruction concerns Arabic and Islamic Education. At the bottom, it is about using assessment information in lessons and leadership capacity.

Recommendations read 698 From 210 schools’ latest KHDA reports

Typical list length 3 Median recommendations per school

Most common theme 65% of schools are asked about using assessment information in lessons

Almost every list asks for better results. The route is what differs.

75% of these schools are asked, somewhere in their list, to raise attainment, progress or outcomes. That is the destination, so it tells a parent little. The more useful signal is how KHDA tells each school to get there. Grouping the recommendations by theme shows a clear hierarchy, led by using assessment information in lessons.

Share of schools whose KHDA recommendations mention each theme210 rated schools with published recommendations. One school can appear in several themes.

Use assessment information in lessons 65% (136)

Raise the quality and consistency of teaching 59% (123)

Arabic, Islamic Education and UAE studies 47% (98)

Build leadership capacity 44% (93)

Challenge and meet different needs 40% (84)

Self-evaluation and improvement planning 39% (81)

Governance 20% (42)

Inclusion and special educational needs 17% (36)

Reading and literacy 13% (28)

Teacher recruitment, training and retention 11% (23)

Critical thinking and independent learning 10% (21)

Attendance and punctuality 5% (10)

Wellbeing 4% (8)

The top of the chart is about the craft of teaching: using assessment information to plan lessons, and making good teaching consistent from class to class. In plain terms, inspectors most often find that a school knows a great deal about its pupils but does not yet use that knowledge in every lesson.

The to-do list changes with the rating

Split the schools by their overall KHDA grade and the priorities separate. Governance appears in 47% of Acceptable or Weak schools’ lists but only 1% of Outstanding or Very good schools’. Leadership capacity falls from 77% to 24%. Arabic and Islamic Education move the other way, rising from 17% to 61%.

Theme	Outstanding or Very good (71)	Good (86)	Acceptable or Weak (53)
Use assessment information in lessons	48%	71%	77%
Raise the quality and consistency of teaching	39%	64%	75%
Arabic, Islamic Education and UAE studies	61%	53%	17%
Build leadership capacity	24%	41%	77%
Challenge and meet different needs	24%	43%	57%
Self-evaluation and improvement planning	25%	37%	58%
Governance	1%	19%	47%
Inclusion and special educational needs	17%	16%	19%
Reading and literacy	11%	14%	15%
Teacher recruitment, training and retention	6%	7%	25%
Critical thinking and independent learning	7%	8%	17%

Read across a row and you can see the ladder. Lower-rated schools are told to fix the machinery: who leads, who holds leaders to account and whether the school judges itself accurately. Higher-rated schools have usually fixed the machinery, so what remains is more specific.

In KHDA’s words, to an Acceptable or Weak school: “Ensure a wider representation of governors with a range of expertise.”

Arabic: the item even top schools still carry

Among Outstanding or Very good schools, Arabic, Islamic Education and related UAE subjects form the most common recommendation theme, appearing in 61% of lists. The data cannot say why. One plausible reading is arithmetic: when teaching, leadership and care are already strong, whatever remains weaker stands out. Arabic is required for all pupils, and Islamic Education for Muslim pupils, whatever the school’s curriculum, so no school can opt out of the comparison.

In KHDA’s words, to an Outstanding or Very good school: “Improve the quality of teaching in Islamic Education.”

What KHDA rarely asks for

Some themes that matter to many parents barely appear. Wellbeing is mentioned in 4% of lists and attendance in 5%. Inclusion and special educational needs sit at 17%, and unusually that share barely changes with the rating. That flat line is worth noticing: a top grade does not mean inclusion is finished business.

Rarity is not proof of strength. Recommendations are a short list of priorities, so a theme can be absent simply because something more pressing came first.

How to use this on a school visit

Ask what has changed since the report. Most of these reports date from 2023. A good school can name each recommendation and show what it did about it.
Match the list to your child. A recommendation about challenge for higher attainers matters more for some children than one about reading in KG.
Treat governance points seriously. They are about whether anyone outside the leadership team can hold it to account.
Read the strengths too. Recommendations are the gaps. The same report lists what inspectors judged to be working well.

Sources and method

Recommendations are the verbatim text of the “recommendations” section of each school’s latest published KHDA inspection report, as held in DubaiSchools.ai’s open dataset. We include 210 of the 217 rated schools: those with at least one published recommendation. Each recommendation is matched to themes with keyword rules, and a school counts towards a theme if any of its recommendations matches. Themes overlap, and 15% of recommendations match none of the themes shown, mostly general calls to raise attainment. Rating bands use the school’s current overall KHDA rating. The figures describe what inspectors wrote; they do not measure what schools have done since. See the methodology.

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