Outstanding Schools
Outstanding is the highest grade a UAE inspectorate awards, and only a small fraction of schools hold it. The list below is every school currently rated Outstanding, across KHDA in Dubai, ADEK in Abu Dhabi, SPEA in Sharjah and RAK DOK in Ras Al Khaimah. Compare their fees and curricula side by side.
Outstanding is the top band of a six-point scale, and across the whole UAE only 37 schools hold it. They are not rated by one body: 21 are Dubai schools inspected by KHDA, 14 are Abu Dhabi schools inspected by ADEK, one is in Sharjah under SPEA and one is in Ras Al Khaimah under RAK DOK. Those are four separate frameworks with their own inspectors and their own reports, so an Outstanding in Dubai and an Outstanding in Abu Dhabi are the same word rather than the same test, and neither converts into the other. Inspectors visit over several days and judge attainment and progress, teaching, student wellbeing, leadership and the curriculum, and a school can lose the grade as well as gain it. The most useful thing this list shows is what the rating does not tell you about price: fees across these 37 schools run from AED 15,880 to AED 110,305, so the cheapest Outstanding school in the country costs about a seventh of the dearest. Rating and fee are close to independent, and any shortlist built on price alone will miss most of this group.
The spread is easiest to see at the two ends. GEMS Millennium School Sharjah is the cheapest Outstanding school in the country at AED 15,880 a year, teaching CBSE in Muwaileh under SPEA. In Dubai the lowest is Lycée Français International at AED 29,488. Both sit in the same rating band as schools charging more than AED 100,000, and all 37 publish their fees, so the comparison is a matter of record rather than estimate.
Outstanding is not a British and IB club, though those two dominate: 28 of the 37 teach a British curriculum and 11 offer the IB. The rest is more varied than that headline suggests, with four American schools, two following the UAE Ministry of Education curriculum, and one each teaching French, Canadian, CBSE and CISCE. GEMS Modern Academy in Nad Al Sheba is the CISCE school, pairing an Indian academic base with an IB Diploma finish, and Dubai International Academy at Emirates Hills runs the IB from primary through to the Diploma.
Two of the 37 sit outside Dubai and Abu Dhabi, and a shortlist built from the two largest emirates alone will miss both. One is the Sharjah school above. The other is RAK Academy - Al Hamra in Al Hamra Village, the only Outstanding school in Ras Al Khaimah and the only one here rated by RAK DOK, teaching the British curriculum from AED 18,700.
All 37 institutions
Fees at a glance
| School | Curriculum | Annual fees from | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bateen World Academy | IB | AED 54,000 | Outstanding |
| Yasmina British Academy | British | AED 49,740 | Outstanding |
| GEMS Jumeirah Primary School | British | AED 44,200 | Outstanding |
| Dubai International Academy | IB | AED 44,979 | Outstanding |
| Dubai British School Jumeirah Park | British | AED 55,350 | Outstanding |
| The Sheikh Zayed Private Academy for Boys | American | AED 45,000 | Outstanding |
| Horizon English School | British | AED 43,849 | Outstanding |
| Nord Anglia International School Dubai | British | AED 69,625 | Outstanding |
| Lycée Français International | French | AED 29,488 | Outstanding |
| Muna British Academy | British | AED 52,973 | Outstanding |
Fees shown are annual starting tuition from official school fee schedules; ratings come from KHDA, ADEK, SPEA and other regulator publications. Updated 2026.
Frequently asked questions
- How many Outstanding schools are there in the UAE?
- Talem lists 37 schools currently rated Outstanding. It is the top band of a six-point scale, so the group stays small even as the sector grows.
- What does an Outstanding rating actually mean?
- It is the highest of six inspection bands, awarded on evidence gathered across a multi-day visit: attainment and progress, teaching quality, student wellbeing, leadership and the curriculum. KHDA, ADEK, SPEA and RAK DOK each run their own inspections against their own framework, and a school can lose the grade as well as gain it.
- Which authority rates each of these schools?
- Of the 37 Outstanding schools, 21 are in Dubai and rated by KHDA, 14 are in Abu Dhabi and rated by ADEK, one is in Sharjah under SPEA and one is in Ras Al Khaimah under RAK DOK. Each entry below names its regulator, because the four frameworks are separate and an Outstanding from one does not convert into an Outstanding from another.
- Are Outstanding schools always the most expensive?
- No, and this is the clearest thing the list shows. Fees across the group run from AED 15,880 to AED 110,305, so the cheapest Outstanding school in the country costs about a seventh of the dearest. Rating and price are close to independent.
- What curricula do Outstanding schools teach?
- British is the most common by some distance at 28 of the group, with 11 offering the IB and four teaching an American curriculum. Several combine two, and the band also includes French and Indian curriculum schools, so it is not a British and IB list.