THE RESILIENCE OF DUBAI Not surprisingly, Dubai, the region’s commercial, financial and tourism hub, is its biggest market for education with 245 international schools. The K-12 market rode the pandemic well and the expats are back. “The market has been incredibly resilient,” says Assomull. According to Dubai’s Knowledge and Human


Development Authority (KHDA), the British curriculum is the most popular, studied by 36% of students, followed by the Indian and American (the latter is the most popular with Emirati students – studied by 60% of them). Schools in the city offer a huge range of other national curriculums, including: Australian, German, Russian and Japanese. Premium and super premium schools are the fastest


growing segments in Dubai and have seen strong post- Covid growth. “They have gained share over budget


and mid-price segments for three reasons – trade ups, the rising affluence of the population and increased inflow of western expats,” says Assomull. Dubai has also benefitted from China’s demise as a destination for international schools. According to LEK, Dubai’s premium education


sector is almost at capacity – 88% of seats were full at the end of 2022, a figure it expects to increase to around 95% by September 2023. “The KHDA is actively looking to recruit schools to Dubai – it wants to bring high quality names to the market,” says Assomull. The last few years have seen a spate of successful


premium openings: the Royal Grammar School Guildford opened in 2021 (it also has a school in Qatar and is opening in Oman) and this September mega education provider GEMS, which operates 60 schools in the MENA region, opens its new Metropole K-12 school, following a British curriculum and with capacity


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THINK GLOBAL PEOPLE EDUCATION : MIDDLE EA ST


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