Every school starts at 25. KHDA's overall rating adds the biggest chunk (up to 30). Wellbeing and inclusion ratings add up to 20 more. The rest — up to 25 — comes from signals the rating alone misses: whether the school is improving over time, how long it has operated, its scale, and growth. The score is capped at 100.
Why we built a composite
The KHDA overall rating is excellent, but it's five bands (Weak → Outstanding). 48 of the 241 schools in our index carry "Very Good" on their most recent KHDA inspection (as of July 2026) and they are not interchangeable. The DubaiSchools Score exists to separate them — using public KHDA signals already in the inspection reports, not opinions or surveys.
If two schools tie on the rating, the score asks: which is improving? Which has a longer track record? Which has the wellbeing and inclusion marks to back the overall grade up?
The formula
Every component is additive. Points are awarded from KHDA public data on a per-school basis.
| Component | Max points |
|---|---|
| Base score (every indexed school starts here) | 25 |
| KHDA overall rating | 30 |
| KHDA wellbeing rating | 10 |
| KHDA inclusion rating | 10 |
| Rating improvement trend (year-over-year) | 10 |
| Track record (years since opening) | 8 |
| Student population (scale) | 5 |
| Enrollment growth trend | 2 |
| Total, capped at 100 | 100 |
KHDA ratings → points
The three KHDA ratings (overall / wellbeing / inclusion) each award a fixed number of points by band.
| KHDA band | Overall | Wellbeing | Inclusion |
|---|---|---|---|
| Outstanding | 30 | 10 | 10 |
| Very Good | 24 | 8 | 8 |
| Good | 18 | 6 | 6 |
| Acceptable | 12 | 4 | 4 |
| Weak | 6 | 2 | 2 |
Rating trend
Using KHDA's rating history (typically the last five inspection years), we compare the earliest rating on file to the latest:
| Moved up at least one band | +10 |
| Held the same band | +5 |
| Dropped a band | 0 |
Track record
Schools that have been operating longer have been inspected more times and adjusted across more cohorts. Points by years since opening:
| 25+ years | +8 |
| 15 – 24 years | +6 |
| 10 – 14 years | +5 |
| 5 – 9 years | +3 |
| Less than 5 years | +2 |
Student population & growth
A small signal for scale (large schools can usually sustain more subject depth and extracurriculars), and a small signal for whether enrolment is trending up, stable, or falling.
| 3,000+ students | +5 |
| 1,500 – 2,999 students | +4 |
| 500 – 1,499 students | +3 |
| Under 500 students | +2 |
| Enrollment grew >10% over the last ~3 years | +2 |
| Enrollment held stable (within 10%) | +1 |
Score bands
On school cards, the rankings page, and the detail-page hero, the numeric score is colour-coded into four bands so you can scan at a glance.
Where the score appears
Search results
Numeric badge in the top-right of every school card.
School detail page
Large score in the hero, next to the KHDA rating.
Rankings page
Sortable pill per row; default sort is score, descending.
Compare & featured
Side-by-side score comparison; homepage "At a glance" shortlist.
What the score is not
- It is not a replacement for reading the KHDA inspection report. The report has detail the score can't carry — classroom observations, subject-level strengths, recommendations for improvement.
- It does not consider fees, commute distance, curriculum fit, facilities, admissions ease, or cultural fit. Those are school-by-family questions no composite can answer.
- It does not weight exam results directly — KHDA already folds exam performance into its overall rating, so double-counting would distort the score.
- Schools without a published KHDA overall rating receive no overall-rating or rating-trend points. The base 25 points and any available wellbeing, inclusion, track-record, scale, or growth inputs still apply. They are marked on the site as "No KHDA Report Available."
- It does not yet cover Abu Dhabi. Our index is Dubai-only (KHDA-inspected schools). If we add Abu Dhabi schools in future, the plan is to apply the same formula with ADEK ratings in place of KHDA — but that is a roadmap item, not a live feature.
Data sources & update cadence
Every score input is drawn from publicly available inspection reports and school disclosures:
- KHDA — Dubai inspection ratings, wellbeing & inclusion scores, rating history
- ADEK — Abu Dhabi's inspection authority (not yet part of our index)
- School-published establishment dates and enrolment figures, cross-checked against inspection reports
Scores are recomputed whenever new KHDA inspection results are released (typically once a year) and when schools file updated enrolment figures.
Independence
DubaiSchools.ai has no financial relationship with any school, KHDA, or ADEK. The score formula is the same for every school — no paid placement, no boosted ranking. See the About page for our full independence statement.
If you spot data that looks wrong on a specific school, email hello@dubaischools.ai and we'll check the source documents.
No paid placement
No school can pay to be listed, ranked, or featured. There is no Promoted slot, no Sponsored strip, no boosted position. Every school appears because KHDA licences it, and its position in any list is determined entirely by the DubaiSchools Score described above or the filter the visitor chose.
Why we don't show per-school air quality
Air quality is a real concern for parents in Dubai, and we get asked about it. We don't show an AQI number on individual school pages — and we don't intend to until the data justifies it.
- Our historical air-quality reference contains CAMS model estimates for a broad Dubai-area grid cell, not measurements at individual schools. The global model has an approximate 45 km resolution.
- The model cannot resolve playground conditions, classroom filtration, roadside exposure or nearby construction. We do not have independently verified school-level measurements for comparison.
- If station-resolved data becomes available, we'll add it. Until then, we'd rather show nothing than show something misleading.
For the dated seasonal reference and its limitations, see our data-anchored guide to Dubai air quality across the school year.
Where each figure comes from
Every value on this site traces to one of the sources below. The first four are KHDA / government open data; Google and the results aggregators are clearly secondary; anything labelled "computed" is a transparent function of the sourced fields, never a new fact.
| KHDA public schools directory | School name, area, curriculum, contacts, principal, grades, year established |
| Latest KHDA inspection reports and school profiles | KHDA rating and its history, the six performance-standard ratings, wellbeing & inclusion, inspection highlights & recommendations, staff numbers, students of determination |
| KHDA fee fact-sheet API | KHDA fee API tables and independently verified KHDA fact sheets |
| KHDA Dubai private-schools open-data workbook Annual enrolment series; the latest published column is recorded per refresh. | Published annual school enrolment and enrolment history |
| KHDA fee sources and reviewed official school tuition pages The source shown on each school identifies KHDA-published fees or a reviewed school-published schedule with an explicit academic year. School-published schedules are not independently KHDA-verified. | Tuition fees by grade, fee history, average / min / max fee, and the source identified on each school |
| Reviewed official school tuition pages An explicitly dated school-published schedule is used where no same-year or newer KHDA fact sheet is available. Standard tuition and stated discounts stay separate; school claims of KHDA approval are not treated as independent verification. | Reviewed school-published tuition, explicit academic year, stated discounts, source URL and content hash |
| KHDA Early Childhood Centres directory | |
| KHDA licensed pupil capacity Stale or mis-filed for ~24 schools; utilisation excludes students>capacity. | Licensed pupil capacity (utilisation excludes schools whose filed capacity is below current enrolment) |
| Dubai Municipality community polygons | Community name & boundary, population, area (km²) |
| Dubai Metro / RTA station data | Nearest metro station, line and distance |
| School admissions websites Registration wording is checked automatically or reviewed against official publications, with source links, actual check dates and academic-year context where available. Availability must be confirmed with the school. | |
| Google Places Crowd reviews and nearby amenities; not editorial. | Google rating & review count, photos, nearby amenities |
| School results announcements, via WhichSchoolAdvisor / SchoolsCompared KHDA does NOT publish per-school exam percentages. Each entry should carry its own source; refresh via the exam-results ingest. | A-Level / IB / GCSE / CBSE results |
| Computed by DubaiSchools from the fields above No new facts — transparent functions of sourced data. | DubaiSchools Score, demand level, fee tier, school age, enrolment trend, rating trajectory — all computed from the sourced fields above |
Note: KHDA does not publish per-school exam percentages — those come from each school's own results announcements, compiled via WhichSchoolAdvisor / SchoolsCompared, and are shown with a source on each school page.