How did we rank these ten schools?
By the entry-level annual fee each school publishes on its own website, cheapest first, read on 20 September 2026. That is the only number every school controls and stands behind. Not one figure here comes from a property portal, and by the middle of this guide you will see why that mattered.
Three things are deliberately missing, and it is fairer to say so than to invent them. No Google ratings: no way to pull them from here that we would trust. No walking or driving times: we cannot compute a route, and seven of these ten publish no street name on their own site — only an area, a PO box, or nothing — so a minute count would be fiction for most of the list. Distance is a district band instead. No opinion on the teaching: nothing here is visited or reviewed. It is compared, on what each school made public.
Everything is measured from one point: Bay Square, Building 12, Marasi Drive, our own address in the middle of Business Bay (that’s us). We run coworking spaces, not schools, so we are not in the ranking — only the pin.
Are there any schools inside Business Bay?
No. Not one. Business Bay has towers, a canal, a metro station and several hundred businesses, and no KHDA-licensed school inside its boundary — a point on which two independent Dubai property portals agree in writing. Every result for “schools in Business Bay” is a school somewhere else, sorted by how charitably the writer defined “near”.
That is zoning, not a gap: Business Bay was laid out as a commercial district and the schools sit in the residential areas ringing it. The useful question is not which school is in Business Bay but which side of which road it is on — two kilometres across one interchange is a very different morning from two kilometres across Sheikh Zayed Road.
What do the ten nearest schools charge?
Ten schools, ordered by the published annual fee for their youngest year group. The spread is a factor of 19.9: AED 7,209 at the bottom, AED 143,681 at the top. Read the curriculum column first — a CBSE school and an IB continuum school are not one product at two prices.
| # | School | District | Curriculum | Youngest year | Oldest year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | GEMS Our Own Indian School | Al Quoz | CBSE | AED 7,209 | AED 14,696 |
| 2 | Lycée Français Jean Mermoz | Al Quoz 1 | French | AED 39,789 | AED 68,525 |
| 3 | Jumeira Baccalaureate School | Jumeira 1, off Al Wasl | IB | AED 43,325 | AED 91,840 |
| 4 | Dubai British School Jumeira | Al Wasl | British | AED 43,500 | AED 77,217 |
| 5 | Horizon English School | Jumeirah / Al Wasl | British, FS1–Y6 | AED 43,849 | AED 58,825 |
| 6 | GEMS Jumeirah Primary School | Al Safa 1 | British, FS1–Y6 | AED 44,200 | AED 55,714 |
| 7 | Safa British School | Al Quoz 1 | British | AED 45,428 | AED 73,550 |
| 8 | Hartland International School | Sobha Hartland, MBR City | British | AED 48,781 | AED 92,803 |
| 9 | JESS Jumeirah | Al Safa 1 | British, FS1–Y6 | AED 54,129 | AED 65,097 |
| 10 | North London Collegiate School Dubai | Nad Al Sheba, MBR City | IB continuum | AED 79,351 | AED 137,934 |
Annual tuition, read on each school’s own fee page on 20 September 2026. NLCS Dubai is shown at its discounted rate; its KHDA-approved figures are AED 91,735 and AED 143,681. Three schools teach primary only, marked FS1–Y6, so their top figure is a Year 6 fee.
Where each fee ladder steps
| School | Entry year | Mid-primary | Lower secondary | Final years |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GEMS Our Own Indian | KG 7,209 | G1–5 8,250 | G6–8 9,347 | G11–12 14,696 |
| Lycée Jean Mermoz | PS 39,789 | rises level by level | Terminale 68,525 | |
| Jumeira Baccalaureate | Pre-KG 43,325 | G3 63,825 | G6–10 79,610 | G11–12 91,840 |
| Dubai British Jumeira | Rising 3s 43,500 | Y3–6 58,836 | Y7–11 69,872 | Y12–13 77,217 |
| Horizon English | FS1 43,849 | Y1–6 58,825 | — | — |
| GEMS Jumeirah Primary | FS1 44,200 | FS2–Y6 55,714 | — | — |
| Safa British | FS1 45,428 | Y2–3 54,081 | Y7 62,733 | Y12–13 73,550 |
| Hartland International | FS1 48,781 | Y3–4 64,248 | Y7–9 83,285 | Y12–13 92,803 |
| JESS Jumeirah | F1 54,129 | F2–Y6 65,097 | — | — |
| NLCS Dubai (KHDA rate) | Pre-KG 91,735 | G4–5 108,314 | G6–8 127,103 | G11–12 143,681 |
All figures in AED per year, read on each school’s own fee page, 20 September 2026.
Which schools are across the canal, in MBR City?
Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum City sits directly across the Dubai Water Canal from Business Bay: the newest band, and the dearest.
Hartland International School
Sobha Hartland, Nad Al Sheba · British · FS1 to Year 13 · AED 48,781 to AED 92,803. A multiplier of 1.90 first year to last, the tightest spread of any all-through school here. Its fee page is headed 2026/27, carries a lower table for families enrolled before 2024-25, and puts GCSE and A Level examination fees on top.
North London Collegiate School Dubai
Nad Al Sheba · IB continuum · Pre-KG to Grade 12 · AED 79,351 to AED 137,934 after discount. The only school here publishing two columns: the KHDA-approved fee and a discount against it, year by year — 13.5% off Pre-KG, 12% off KG1, 7% off KG2, 0% in Grades 4 and 5, then 4% from Grade 6 up. We checked all fifteen rows of its published table; the discount holds to the dirham on every one. It is also the only one stating what holding a place costs: AED 500 plus AED 25 VAT to apply, and a non-refundable AED 10,000 deposit.
Which schools are across Sheikh Zayed Road, in Al Quoz?
Al Quoz 1 is the band on the far side of Sheikh Zayed Road, one interchange away, and the most varied: the cheapest school in this guide and one of the dearest, in one district, on three curricula.
GEMS Our Own Indian School
Al Quoz · CBSE · KG to Grade 12 · AED 7,209 to AED 14,696. The cheapest published fee within reach of Business Bay, by a distance: the Grade 12 fee here is under a third of the FS1 fee at every British school in this list — a multiplier of 2.04 across thirteen years, collected in ten instalments, nothing in July or August.
Safa British School
Meydan Street, Al Quoz 1 · British · FS1 to Year 13 · AED 45,428 to AED 73,550. Its fee page names the period it covers — “September 2026 – August 2027” — and says the figures are subject to a KHDA-approved increase. It climbs in the smallest steps of any school here, for a multiplier of just 1.62 — and it is the only school publishing its full daily timetable.
Lycée Français Jean Mermoz
Al Quoz 1, Hessa Street · French national curriculum · PS to Terminale · AED 39,789 to AED 68,525. Two campuses, same annual fees, different discounts. Registration is AED 500 at every level, payment falls due before each term in August, December and March, and from the third child the youngest gets 10% off. One caveat, and it is why this guide has a section on the subject: the two tables on its fee page are headed “North Campus Tuition fees 2025-2026” and “South Campus Tuition fees 2025-2026”. There is no 2026-2027 table on the page.
Which schools are in Al Safa and Al Wasl?
One district west, beyond Al Wasl Road, sits the oldest cluster of British schools in Dubai — five of them, one founded in 1976.
Jumeira Baccalaureate School
53 B Street, off Al Wasl Road, Jumeira 1 · IB · Pre-KG to Grade 12 · AED 43,325 to AED 91,840. One of only three here publishing an actual street address. Its table is headed “Fees for Academic Year 2026/27” and climbs by 2.12, the steepest in the list. Grades 6 to 10 sit flat, so the step into the Diploma years is the biggest single jump a family here will budget for.
Dubai British School Jumeira
Jumeira, 30 B Street, Al Wasl · British · Rising 3s to Year 13 · AED 43,500 to AED 77,217. The only school here with a Rising 3s entry point, priced below the FS1–Year 2 band of 51,477. Application is AED 525 and registration AED 4,000, credited against term one, and the page gives its figures as KHDA-approved rates for 2026/27.
Horizon English School
Jumeirah / Al Wasl · British, FS1 to Year 6 only · AED 43,849 to AED 58,825. A primary school in the Cognita group, ages three to eleven; a senior school of the same name is planned in Town Square for August 2027, a different site. Three fee bands, plus AED 1,200 a year in medical fees. Its fee page is headed 2026-27; it publishes no street address we could find.
GEMS Jumeirah Primary School
Al Safa 1 · British, FS1 to Year 6 · AED 44,200 to AED 55,714. Two bands only: Two bands only. Application is AED 500 plus VAT, and the registration deposit is not a flat sum but 10% of the annual fee — AED 4,420 at FS1 rates. Its page cites Article 51 of the bylaw to Federal Law No. 28 of 1999 as the basis on which fees may change, franker small print than most.
JESS Jumeirah
Al Safa 1 · British, Early Years and Primary · AED 54,129 to AED 65,097. Founded in 1976, the oldest school here, and the one whose fee table needs a warning: JESS runs two campuses and publishes a single schedule covering both. Jumeirah teaches Early Years and Primary only, so only its first two rows apply; the Secondary row at 91,923 and the Sixth Form row at 104,544 belong to Arabian Ranches.
How can you tell a current fee page from an old one?
Divide the figure you are reading by 1.0235. If you land exactly on the school’s own published fee, the page you are reading is two academic years out of date. That is the finding this guide was built on, and it is arithmetic you can check in ten seconds.
Dubai’s regulator sets an Education Cost Index each year, and for-profit schools may raise fees by that percentage — the mechanism is on the UAE government’s own school fees page. For 2025-26 the index was 2.35%. Then, on 22 May 2026, the regulator froze private school fees for 2026-27 outright. This year’s fee is last year’s fee, unchanged.
So a page showing a 2026/27 number 2.35% below the school’s own figure is not showing last year. It is showing the year before. We tested it on the four schools where a large Dubai property portal still publishes a range:
| School | Portal figure | × 1.0235 | School’s own page | Match |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hartland International, entry | AED 47,661 | AED 48,781 | AED 48,781 | exact |
| Hartland International, top | AED 90,672 | AED 92,803 | AED 92,803 | exact |
| Safa British, entry | AED 44,385 | AED 45,428 | AED 45,428 | exact |
| Safa British, top | AED 71,861 | AED 73,550 | AED 73,550 | exact |
| GEMS Jumeirah Primary, entry | AED 43,185 | AED 44,201 | AED 44,200 | within AED 1 |
| GEMS Jumeirah Primary, top | AED 54,435 | AED 55,714 | AED 55,714 | exact |
| Horizon English, entry | AED 43,126 | AED 44,139 | AED 43,849 | no |
| Horizon English, top | AED 57,812 | AED 59,171 | AED 58,825 | no |
Portal figures read 20 September 2026 on a Dubai property portal’s Business Bay schools guide; school figures read the same day on each school’s own fee page.
Three of the four land on the nose at both ends. Horizon English School does not — what you would expect of a school that chose not to take the full increase it was entitled to. That mismatch is why this is a check and not a rule: it tells you a page is old, not what the school charges. The consequence is good news this autumn: the fee quoted for 2026-27 cannot be higher than last year’s. For how fees are structured across the city, and what the 40% due up front means, see our guide to Dubai school fees.
Which schools did we leave out, and why?
Two, and both exclusions are about what we could read, not about the schools.
JSS Private School, Al Safa. On paper the closest Indian-curriculum school to Business Bay metro, and on price it would have ranked second. Its own website returned “Access Denied” to every attempt we made on 20 September 2026, and a fee we cannot read on the operator’s own page is one we do not publish.
Clarion School, Al Quoz 1. An American-curriculum school in the right band, whose admissions page publishes an application fee of AED 500 and a seat deposit of AED 5,000 — AED 5,500 before a single term — and no tuition schedule at all. The absence is the finding: of the twelve schools we opened in these districts, eleven publish a fee ladder and one does not. Ask for it in writing before you pay the deposit.
We also left out everything beyond the third band — Al Barsha, Al Garhoud, Dubailand — none of it meaningfully near Business Bay on a weekday morning.
What do you pay before the first term starts?
Tuition is what everyone compares. The entry cost decides whether you can hold two offers at once while you decide — and it is published far less consistently.
| School | Application | Deposit to hold the place | Refundable? |
|---|---|---|---|
| North London Collegiate | AED 500 + AED 25 VAT | AED 10,000 | No — offset against term 1 |
| Clarion School | AED 500 | AED 5,000 | not stated |
| Dubai British School Jumeira | AED 525 | AED 4,000 | credited to term 1 |
| GEMS Jumeirah Primary | AED 500 + VAT | 10% of annual fee — AED 4,420 at FS1 | non-refundable |
| Lycée Français Jean Mermoz | AED 500 registration | not published | — |
Read on each school’s own admissions page, 20 September 2026. The other schools publish no entry cost we could find.
The deposit at the top of this table, AED 10,000, is more than a full year of tuition at GEMS Our Own Indian School a few kilometres away. And GEMS Jumeirah Primary states its deposit as a percentage rather than a sum, so it rises with the fee on its own.
What time does the school day start and end?
Drop-off is 7:15 to 7:40am at both schools in this list that publish a timetable — the same window, to the minute, at Safa British School in Al Quoz and GEMS Jumeirah Primary in Al Safa, with registration at 7:40. That single fact shapes the whole morning, and only two schools in ten state it in public.
| School | Drop-off | Mon–Thu pickup | Friday pickup |
|---|---|---|---|
| Safa British, FS1 | 7:15–7:40am | 12:45–1:00pm | 11:10am |
| Safa British, FS2 | 7:15–7:40am | 2:00–2:15pm | 11:10am |
| Safa British, Years 1–6 | 7:15–7:40am | 2:20–2:40pm | 11:20am |
| Safa British, Years 7–13 | 7:15–7:35am | 3:20–3:30pm | 11:30am |
| GEMS JPS, FS1 | 7:15–7:40am | 12:30pm | 11:15–11:30am |
| GEMS JPS, FS2–Year 6 | 7:15–7:40am | 2:30–2:45pm | 11:15–11:30am |
Published timings read 20 September 2026. Safa British School’s timetable page is headed 2025-2026 while its fee page is headed 2026-2027 — one school, two pages, two years.
What does the Friday finish do to a working week?
It turns Friday into a four-hour working day. Drop a child at 7:40, collect them at 11:15, and the usable block between is under three and a half hours once you have parked twice. Monday to Thursday you get six or seven hours.
This is the part of Dubai school life no fee table shows, and it is why the district band matters more than the ranking position: between a school across the canal and one across Al Wasl Road, the difference is not the fee, it is whether the short Friday morning is spent in a car or at a desk. A school is not chosen on logistics. But where two are close on curriculum, phase and fee — several pairs above are — the road between them and your working day is a fair tiebreaker, and the one nobody publishes.
Where can a parent work between drop-off and pickup?
Which brings us back to Business Bay, and to the one part of this guide where we have something to sell (that’s us). Ten schools ring a district with no school in it and a great deal of desk space, and that geometry is not an accident.
At Oh My Desk, Bay Square Building 12, Marasi Drive (that’s us), a hot desk is AED 950 a month and a day pass AED 120, both before the 5% VAT added at payment. Reception is open Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm; members hold a badge and have 24/7 access — the part that matters when the day starts at 7:40. A monthly membership includes one hour of meeting room time, a dedicated desk — Downtown only — four, a private office six. Rooms for up to eight are AED 120 an hour beyond that.
The honest arithmetic, since this guide has done nothing else: twenty day passes cost AED 2,400 and a month of coworking costs AED 950, so past eight days a month the membership wins by AED 1,450. If you will be there twice a term, it does not. Buy the day passes.
Private offices start at AED 6,000 a month, and our third address in the Design District opens on 1 October 2026. Driving in from the third band, the other thing to read first is where you can actually park.
FAQ: 10 quick answers
Search Console records no measurable traffic on school questions for this district yet, so the ten below come from the school search terms we measured in Semrush’s UAE database on 20 September 2026.
1. Are there any schools in Business Bay? No — there is no KHDA-licensed school inside Business Bay itself. Every school marketed as being “in Business Bay” is in a neighbouring district: Mohammed Bin Rashid City across the canal, Al Quoz across Sheikh Zayed Road, or Al Safa and Al Wasl further west.
2. What is the cheapest school near Business Bay? GEMS Our Own Indian School in Al Quoz, at AED 7,209 a year for Kindergarten and AED 14,696 for Grades 11 and 12, on its own 2026-2027 CBSE fee sheet. The cheapest British option in the same radius is Horizon English School at AED 43,849; the cheapest IB option is Jumeira Baccalaureate School at AED 43,325.
3. What is the most expensive school near Business Bay? North London Collegiate School Dubai in Nad Al Sheba, where the KHDA-approved fee runs from AED 91,735 at Pre-KG to AED 143,681 in Grades 11 and 12. Its discounts bring those to AED 79,351 and AED 137,934 — still eleven times the cheapest entry fee here.
4. Did Dubai school fees go up for 2026-27? No. Dubai’s education regulator confirmed on 22 May 2026 that private school fees are frozen for 2026-27. The year before, eligible for-profit schools could raise fees by up to 2.35% under the Education Cost Index.
5. How do I know if a school fee page is out of date? Divide the figure by 1.0235 and see whether you land on an older published number, then check the school’s own site. Because fees are frozen this year, a page quoting a 2026/27 fee 2.35% below what the school publishes is two academic years old. We found exactly that at a property portal, on three schools out of four.
6. Which schools near Business Bay follow the British curriculum? Six of the ten: Hartland International, Safa British School, Dubai British School Jumeira, Horizon English School, GEMS Jumeirah Primary and JESS Jumeirah — of which Horizon, GEMS JPS and JESS Jumeirah finish at Year 6 and the other three run to Year 13.
7. What time does the school day start in Dubai? Drop-off is 7:15 to 7:40am at both schools near Business Bay that publish a timetable, with registration at 7:40. Pickup runs from about 12:45pm for the youngest year groups to 3:30pm for secondary. Only two of these ten publish timings at all.
8. Why is Friday a half day at Dubai schools? The UAE working week runs Monday to Friday with a short Friday, and schools follow it. At Safa British School, Friday pickup is 11:10am for Foundation Stage, 11:20am for Years 1 to 6 and 11:30am for Years 7 to 13; GEMS Jumeirah Primary finishes between 11:15 and 11:30am. The same children finish between 12:30pm and 3:30pm the rest of the week.
9. What do you pay to hold a school place in Dubai? An application fee of around AED 500 plus a deposit, and the deposit is where schools diverge: North London Collegiate asks AED 10,000, Clarion School AED 5,000, Dubai British School Jumeira AED 4,000, and GEMS Jumeirah Primary 10% of the annual fee — AED 4,420 at FS1 rates. Most are credited against term one.
10. Can I work in Business Bay while my children are at school nearby? Yes — that is broadly what the district is for. At Oh My Desk in Bay Square (that’s us) a day pass is AED 120 and a monthly hot desk AED 950, both before 5% VAT, with reception Monday to Friday 9am to 6pm and 24/7 badge access. The break-even is about eight days a month.
What to do next
Three things, in order. Open the school’s own fee page before anyone else’s, and check the academic year in the table heading, not the page title — one school here still publishes 2025-2026 fees and one publishes none. Ask for the daily timings in writing: eight of ten do not publish them, and they will shape your week more than the fee will. And ask what the deposit is and whether it is credited or lost — across four schools here it ranges from AED 4,000 to AED 10,000.
And if the school run leaves you in Business Bay with four hours to spend, spend them at a desk. Book a free tour, or look at our Bay Square address, what a coworking membership includes and how a day pass works. Our Design District address will open on 1 October 2026.
