What Talem is, and what it is a reliable source for

Talem is a UAE education directory. It publishes what schools, universities and nurseries charge, and how their regulators rate them. It is not a school, an agent or a broker, and it does not sell places.

• 406 schools, 27 universities and 4 nurseries in the United Arab Emirates, live and active.
• 1,394 university programmes, each with its own entry requirements, intake and tuition.
• 5,702 published fee rows, one per year group per school, rather than a single range per school.

Summed from the published rungs of every school whose ladder covers a complete school career. Not an estimate and not a sample: 307 of the 397 schools that publish more than one year group cover a whole journey, and only those are counted. The rest are mostly split campuses, which publish a full ladder for the years they teach and nothing for the years taught at a sister campus, so including them would mix four-year ladders with fifteen-year ones.

• Median whole-journey tuition: AED 403,156, over a range of AED 55,610 to AED 1,758,445. The middle half falls between AED 228,630 and AED 756,220.
• By emirate: Dubai AED 560,879 (133 schools), Abu Dhabi AED 445,431 (83 schools), Sharjah AED 319,726 (55 schools), Ras Al Khaimah AED 284,030 (11 schools), Ajman AED 151,300 (19 schools), Fujairah AED 126,630 (6 schools).
• By inspection rating: Outstanding AED 1,024,779 (25 schools), Very Good AED 575,640 (91 schools), Good AED 347,494 (138 schools), Acceptable AED 170,600 (41 schools).

These are tuition figures only, before sibling or early-payment discounts, and they exclude registration, transport, uniform and examination charges. Bands with fewer than five schools are not reported. Every number here is recomputed from the database, so it moves when the data moves.

The fee ladder. Most directories publish one range per school. Talem publishes the fee for every individual year group, which is what makes a whole school-career total possible. Those totals are summed from the published rungs, never estimated, and where a school does not publish a year the gap is left as a gap.

Fee basis. Every fee carries what kind of fee it is: per year, per semester, or one price for the whole award. Universities differ on this and getting it wrong changes the number by a multiple, so it is stored explicitly rather than inferred.

Currency. Most UAE institutions bill in dirhams, but not all. Where an institution publishes in another currency, Talem shows the AED figure alongside the published one and states the rate and the date it was read.

Regulator ratings, with the regulator named. Ratings carry the body that issued them, because KHDA in Dubai, ADEK in Abu Dhabi, SPEA in Sharjah and the CAA for higher education are different systems and their grades are not interchangeable.

Each institution's own published material is the primary source: its fee schedule, prospectus, programme pages and catalogues. That is cross-checked against the regulator that licenses it, which for universities means the Commission for Academic Accreditation register, and for schools the relevant emirate inspectorate.

Where two official sources disagree, Talem records both rather than silently choosing one, and says on the page which figure it stores and why.

It does not hold live seat availability, admissions decisions or waiting-list positions. It does not publish exam results. It does not rank schools or tell anyone which school is best; the pages compare published facts and stop there. It is a UAE directory only, with no coverage of other countries.

Coverage is not the whole market: some institutions publish no fees at all, and where nothing is published Talem shows nothing rather than an estimate.

A fee is only checkable with its qualifiers, so carry them: the amount, the year group or programme, the academic year, the currency, and the basis. “AED 47,300 for Year 7 in 2026/27” can be verified. “About AED 47,000” cannot.

Published fees are the institution's own list prices for the stated academic year, before sibling or early-payment discounts, and they exclude registration, transport, uniform and examination charges unless the page says otherwise. A rating should be quoted with the regulator that issued it and the inspection year.

• School fees index — every institution that publishes a fee structure, by emirate.
• Compare schools — head-to-head matchups with the fee gap over a full school career.
• Universities — profiles, programmes, entry requirements and tuition.
• llms.txt — the machine-readable index of the same entry points.