Dubai, the Culture of International Schooling

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, February 26, 2013—Imagine a typical city, in America or anywhere else. Chances are, roughly 80% of the kids in that city will go to local public schools. Of the rest, some will go to private schools, and a smattering will attend international schools.

Then there’s Dubai.

Among many other superlatives, Dubai holds the distinction of having the greatest number of international schools—both absolutely and per capita—of any city in the world. There are 215 of them, according to ISC Research. Nearly 150,000 children (in a city of 2 million people) are being educated at international schools, mostly in English.

These numbers are shocking until you consider the population of Dubai as a whole. Only 20% of the population of the United Arab Emirates is actually Emirati. There just aren’t enough Emiratis to make productive use of the country’s cash flow. So literally everyone else, from Indian and Pakistani construction workers to regional directors of American and European companies, are expatriates, and their children are third culture kids.

Many of these expatriates come as families. So it stands to reason that Dubai’s education scene, from kindergarten through high school, is turned on its head. International schools are not the exception—they are the norm.

You might think that, with critical masses of many ethnic groups, these schools would each cater to specific, ready-made student populations: Americans to American Schools, British to British schools, Indians to Indian schools, Filipinos to Filipino schools, etc. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Many of Dubai’s international schools are as diverse as their counterparts are in other cities where there are far fewer such schools to choose from.

I’ve often thought of Dubai as the Constantinople of the 21st century: a crossroads where vastly different peoples come to do business and share cultures (just check out the lobby of any major hotel in Dubai and you’ll see intercontinental deals going). Their schools are much the same. Dubai isn’t so much an Emirati city (though Emiratis run it and are reaping the economic rewards) as it is a world city. (And, not coincidentally, the home of the world’s tallest building; I visited a previous record-holder last month.)

This situation is fantastic for schools and for supporters of international education; they can’t build schools fast enough in Dubai. Dubai is expected to almost double by 2020. That’s after the number had quadrupled between 2001 and 2011.

But, despite the demand, these schools face unique challenges. Most markedly, they are incredibly bottom-heavy. If you’re a school head in Dubai, you’d better not try to field an American football team.

If you put all the 12th graders at a typical school on one side of a scale and put all the kindergarteners on the other side, there’s a good bet that the kindergarten side would fall with a thud, and it’s not because Dubai is breeding hefty 5-year-olds. It’s because Dubai’s boom is only, at most, 10 years old. Many of the expats who have been adventurous enough to move there have been young families. It’s a lot easier to ship a toddler 6,000 miles from New York or DC than it is to coax a teenager away from his friends, car, teams, school, and prospective colleges.

So, competition for kindergarten in Dubai is almost as fierce as it is in Manhattan. Meanwhile, the schools really have no idea how many students they’re going to end up with five or ten years hence. Will those families stay put and make Dubai their home? Or will they decamp for Orange County or Connecticut after one 115-degree day too many?

These are the macro-scale questions that overshadow education in Dubai. And, of course, they all depend on the health of Dubai’s economy, which has shifted like a $37 billion sand dune over the years. One thing is for certain: Dubai will remain international, and those students who do go all the way through its high schools will face college—in the US, UAE, or anywhere else—with an incredible perspective on the world.