How Talem verifies
Every fee and rating on Talem is read from a published document. Nothing is estimated, interpolated or projected.
What every figure is read from
Four kinds of figure, four kinds of document. The page always says which.
Tuition fees
Each school’s own published fee schedule for the academic year named on the page, one figure per year group. Where a regulator publishes an approved fee list as well, that figure is stored in its own column and labelled as the regulator’s. The two are never blended and neither is rounded.
Inspection ratings
The grades published by each emirate’s regulator: KHDA in Dubai, ADEK in Abu Dhabi, SPEA in Sharjah, the Department of Knowledge in Ras Al Khaimah and the Ministry of Education elsewhere. Talem stores the year of the grade and, where a full report is published, the phase-by-phase breakdown as printed. A school without a published grade is shown as not rated.
Accreditations
Shown only when the accrediting body’s own register or certificate lists the school and the accreditation is in force. A logo on a school’s website is not enough on its own.
Universities
Programmes, entry requirements and tuition from the university’s own published pages, and licensing from the Commission for Academic Accreditation’s register.
What Talem does not do
No estimates
Talem does not project next year’s fees, interpolate a missing year group, or convert one regulator’s scale into another’s. If the document does not carry a figure, the page does not either.
No invented ratings
A parent score is a parent score and an inspection grade is an inspection grade. They are shown separately and never averaged into one number.
No written-for-you reviews
Reviews are written by parents and students and moderated before they appear. Talem does not write them, and an institution cannot remove one by asking.
When figures are checked
Every profile and fee page carries a method line under its facts: the fee year and inspection year the figures were read from, and the date a person last checked the row.
Fees
Re-read every year when schools publish the new schedule. The 2026-27 sweep ran from June to September 2026.
Ratings
Re-read against each regulator’s register as reports are published. Dubai and Sharjah were re-read in full against KHDA and SPEA in September 2026.
Where a page shows no date, the row has not yet been stamped by a check, and the line says only what the figures were read from.
If a figure is wrong, say so
Contact Talem with the page and the document that shows the right figure. Schools and universities can claim their profile and send corrections directly. A correction changes a figure only once it has been checked against a document, the same way the original was read.
Talem’s data is compiled and checked by the Talem team, the same way for every institution, whether or not it has claimed its profile.
Questions about the method
Where do the fees on Talem come from?
From the school’s own published fee schedule for the academic year shown on the page, one figure per year group. Where a regulator also publishes an approved fee list, that figure is stored in its own column and shown as the regulator’s, never blended with the school’s.
What does “not rated” mean?
That the regulator has not published a grade for the school. Talem does not fill the gap with an estimate, a parent score or a grade from another emirate’s scale.
How current are the figures?
Each page says so. The method line under the facts names the fee year and the inspection year the figures were read from, and the date a person last checked the row. If a page has no date, nobody has stamped it yet and the line says only what the figures were read from.
Can a school change its own figures?
A school can claim its profile and send a correction. A correction changes a figure only once it has been checked against a document, the same way the original figure was read.