Dubai School Fee Calculator

Two numbers multiply together. The first is the Education Cost Index, a single percentage KHDA publishes each spring based on what it costs to run a school in Dubai. The second is a multiplier tied to what happened at the school's most recent inspection. A school that kept the same rating gets 1× the ECI. A school that moved up a band gets more, for one year only: 2× for Weak to Acceptable or Acceptable to Good, 1.75× for Good to Very Good, 1.5× for Very Good to Outstanding. A school whose rating dropped gets nothing that year, and Weak or Very Weak schools can't raise fees at all.

No, and this is the part most parents (and a fair number of fee calculators) get wrong. The bigger multipliers reward improvement, not status. An Outstanding school that stays Outstanding gets the plain 1× ECI, the same as a Good school that stays Good. The 1.5× only applies in the year a school first reaches Outstanding. After that it drops back to 1×.

2.35% for the 2025-26 academic year, announced in early 2025. The year before it was 2.6%, and 2023-24 was around 3%. There's no ECI for 2026-27 because of the freeze. KHDA hasn't said anything about 2027-28 yet; that announcement normally lands in March or April. Until then the calculator assumes 2.35%, and you can change it.

Not on tuition. The KHDA cap is binding for every private school in Dubai, and KHDA runs a parent complaint channel for fee disputes. What the cap doesn't touch is everything outside tuition: buses, uniforms, lunch, trips, technology fees. Those can rise by any amount, which is why it's worth reading the full fee schedule rather than the tuition line alone.

Then set the ECI field to 0 and the whole projection flattens. Nobody knows yet. The 2026-27 freeze was announced as a one-year measure, and KHDA's normal rhythm is to publish the next index in spring. For a parent budgeting in late 2026, the sensible plan is 2.35% from 2027-28, with the chance of a pleasant surprise if it comes in lower.

No. KHDA regulates Dubai only. Abu Dhabi schools answer to ADEK, which sets its own cap on its own timetable, and the northern emirates each have their own arrangements. The 2026-27 freeze was a Dubai decision. This calculator is for Dubai-registered schools.

As a budgeting baseline, fine. As a promise, no. The ECI moves every year, the freeze may or may not be extended, and a school's rating can shift at each inspection. Worked example: AED 45,000 today with the same rating held becomes about AED 55,000 after ten years at 2.35%, or about AED 59,000 if the index drifts back to 3%. Re-run the numbers each spring once KHDA publishes.