Dubai, UAE · est. 1966 · PrivateThe American School of Dubai was founded in 1966 - before the United Arab Emirates itself existed - and is one of the oldest international schools in the city. It began with eleven pupils and two teachers in an apartment in Deira, opened by the oil company Dubai Petroleum for the children of its American staff; today it has more than two thousand pupils on its campus in Al Barsha 1. The curriculum is American, from PreK to Grade 12, with a high school diploma: graduation runs on credits from required subjects and a wide range of electives, and on top of them the school offers Advanced Placement courses with College Board examinations. In the early years the school works to the Reggio Emilia approach with learning through play: the early learning centre is a separate building for PreK, K1 and K2. The school is not run for profit: it says plainly that all of the fee goes into education, and explains by this its ability to think about quality rather than profit. The campus is large and well equipped: more than a hundred classrooms, two libraries, a theatre, a design and innovation centre for community benefit, an athletics arena, two pool complexes, tennis courts, a running track and competition fields, three primary school playgrounds, a sustainability garden, a bee garden, two canteens and science laboratories. Sport runs in seasons and the teams play in the regional MESAC conference against schools in the UAE, Qatar, Oman and India: dance, golf, swimming and volleyball in the first season, basketball, cross country, cheerleading, football, tennis and wrestling in the second, badminton, baseball, softball and athletics in the third; each sport has middle school, junior varsity and varsity levels. The main thing a parent needs to know: the fee is high - from 60,571 dirhams in PreK to 89,319 in Grades 1 to 12 - and on top of it a yearly campus maintenance charge of 12,984 dirhams is taken from KG2 onwards.
Key facts
Accreditations and programmes verified against official registries
CIS · membershipMSA · accreditationCollege Board · authorised programmeWhat stands behind each entry
It accredits international schools and is a paying association at the same time. It examines governance and ownership, the curriculum, teaching, student wellbeing, staff and premises; a team of volunteers from other CIS accredited schools visits the school. Membership and accreditation are different things here, and schools confuse them more often than anything else.
What the badge means for this school. The school belongs to this organisation but has not been through its accreditation. The difference matters: membership is usually paid for and has no external inspection behind it. The entry is confirmed in the organisation's open directory.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →One of the oldest American accreditations, working since 1887 in more than a hundred countries and linked to the Office of Overseas Schools of the US State Department. It judges the school as an institution across twelve areas, including finances, governance, premises and student support.
What the badge means for this school. The school has been through this organisation's accreditation. It was judged as a whole: governance, safeguarding, staff, premises, teaching. The entry stands in the organisation's public register - anyone can check it.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →An American organisation that allows a school to put the letters AP on a pupil's transcript. The permission is granted course by course and tied to a particular teacher, it has to be renewed every year, and College Board reads the course syllabus before granting it.
What the badge means for this school. The school is allowed to run advanced AP courses - not the school as a whole, but one by one: by subject and by teacher. Governance, safeguarding and the primary years are not part of that check. Which subjects are actually approved is visible in the ledger. The entry stands in the organisation's public register - anyone can check it. Authorisation here runs a year at a time: the register lists the school for the 2025-2026 school year.
Register to check for yourself, and the full guide →Advanced Placement: American advanced courses for the senior years. The exam for a course is set and marked by the College Board, not by the school. A good result is counted by American universities as a first-year course already passed, which saves a student time and money.
What this means for this school. A school does not get to call a course AP automatically: the College Board reads the course syllabus and approves it separately for every subject and every teacher, and the permission has to be renewed each year. Every approved school in the world is listed in the open AP Course Ledger, and this school's entry there stands as a line in the accreditation block above. How many courses a school is approved for, and in which subjects, the ledger does not show in its general listing. AP has no leaving certificate of its own: it sits on top of the school's main programme rather than being a separate system.
The American school programme, with the High School Diploma at the end. It usually comes together with AP courses, which the College Board stands behind, and with an American accreditation - MSA, NEASC or Cognia.
What this means for this school. The diploma is written out by the school itself: the American programme has no common leaving exam, and the content of the senior years is set by the school. Outside checking therefore rests on two things here - the accreditation of the school, and the AP exams if the school runs them.