Advice on moving to dubai as a british muslim family

[Aimhigh3232]

Hi all,

I'd be really grateful for advice on any schools that we should consider in Dubai. We have a 4 year old and a 3 year old and are looking for a British curriculum school with focus on Islam. Any suggestions please? We dont mind the area as I'll only be travelling to the office twice a week (near Al Barsha) but just want a nice, relatively affordable school for the girls.

Also, my salary will be in region of 350,000 AED annually. Will that be sufficient?

Thank you!!

I can’t help with the schools, but I don’t think your salary will be enough unless your employer is covering school fees. Accommodation prices are sky high here at the moment.

Thank you for coming back to me. I had assumed around 190k for accommodation bills included and around 80k for 2 kids in education. Leaving around 80k for other expenses.

Is that not realistic? Im not so concerned with savings as I'll be putting my house on rent and be saving a little that way.

I think that’s probably not enough for school fees (and uniforms, extra curricular, school transport etc). And you’d need a nanny for when you’re at work and the school holidays. There’s a FB page called British Mums in Dubai that would know more about school costs. Good luck.

You will probably need a bit more than that, expenses rack up quickly in Dubai, schooling will get very expensive. If you are going as a couple your DH will probably need to find a job quickly to make it comfortable. A lot of schools will offer quaranic studies at some point as an additional option for muslim students (I’m not in Dubai so can’t advise on specific schools). But you may prefer a tutor or external classes as these will only run during term times, a couple of my DC friends have tutoring outside of school instead. You can make it work, it depends on the lifestyle you are aiming for. Many people in Dubai aren’t on mega packages but you will have to be very careful with money.

It’s important to bear in mind the weather for most of the year is pretty uncomfortable (unless you like humidity) so with small kids you can end up doing activities indoors for much of the year so clubs, soft play etc and that can get quite expensive too.

I wish you luck!

Are you moving there with a partner? Will he be earning too?

When you say you want a British curriculum school with a focus on Islam, what do you mean? All schools will have Islamic lessons but there aren't many that have a true Islamic focus that attract a lot of kids with strong English. It might be worth looking at International School of Creative Science. My daughter's friend ended up going to the American curriculum branch and, and she was from a conservative Emirati family that cared about girls' education (and spoke fluent English). I have no idea on how good the school is as we've lost touch. That's the type of school where all female teachers will be required to cover and wear headscarves.

That said, you'll find that the curriculum is adapted in nearly all schools and they are very Muslim tolerant even if not necessarily focused on Islamic values specifically. There will likely be a lot of Muslim children in each class, and things like fasting over Ramadan will be normal.

On salary, I assume you're looking at 2/3 bed flats which means 180k inc bills should be doable (assuming you're looking at suburbs). 80k for the school fees also doable provided you avoid the premium schools. Given your budget it might be worth looking at the new GEMS Founders school in Dubai South - it's new but the other location is widely considered the best budget British school in Dubai, you might be able to afford a villa there and I suspect you'll find a high % of Muslim families (although i don't know for sure).

Your problem is the 80k for everything else. This will be tight. Doable maybe (will you need to be paying car hire/loan out of that or will you have the cash to buy a car upfront?) but you will struggle to save much and realistically you need to cut your accomodation and school budget. Have you got medical covered for the whole family?

To put it in context, you're allowing just over 6k a month for 'everything else'. Admittedly I have teens, but my grocery spend is 5k a month, and we shop mainly in the Dubai equivalent of Aldi. Even when the kids were little, we never managed to get it below 700 a week, and that was 10 years ago and prices have gone up a lot (this includes things like detergent and toiletries - it's not just food). You won't be able to hire a car for under 1k a month and mobiles phone/internet will realistically cost at least 500 a month.

PP have given good advice regarding the salary, but I'm just wondering why you are looking for schools with a focus on Islam? The UAE is very much a Muslim country and the environment caters to all aspects of Islam, whether or not the school is British. Most (expat) Muslims I know in Dubai send their kids to Islamic classes after school if they want to supplement their religious teachings - I'm told Quran teaching etc is typically good and highly regulated by the government.

Is that not realistic? Im not so concerned with savings as I'll be putting my house on rent and be saving a little that way

Are you in an area where it will be classed as your second home and you’ll pay double or triple council tax?

It’s what I’m having to do with my UK house even though it’s my only home in the UK. It’s still going to be classed as my second home.

I say this as a muslim. Dubai is probably less islamic than some cities in the uk with a large muslim population behind hidden doors.

@PinkChaires I agree. If the OP wants a focus on Islamic values as part of education for her kids, your standard premium British international school won't give her what she wants. It will be tolerant but the other parents won't have the same focus. Abu Dhabi yes, Dubai no.

It's very rare for a girl to wear a head scarf at my kids' school. They absolutely could, but they'd stand out. Where I'm from in the UK it would be completely normal. On non-uniform day the kids are wearing the same clothes they would in London (in the summer). This is just clothing, but it paints a picture.

That's why I was suggesting that OP might find a happy medium with somewhere like Founders which doesn't have such a British student base. Plus added bonus that she can't afford premium British school fees anyway!

Any home you earn and don't live in should be taxed heavily in my view. But that's for another thread.

Im not sure I would want to move there on a relatively low salary. That's only around 72k GBP

Any home you earn and don't live in should be taxed heavily in my view. But that's for another thread

Im not sure who your post was directed at. The Op perhaps as it isn’t relevant to my situation. My home in the UK sits empty all the year round and always has done for the 25 years we’ve owned it. It’s so we can turn up anytime we like for a few days or longer whenever we want to be with family. There would be no point in having it otherwise and it’s worth the extra council tax.

The Op may perhaps think differently if they’re thinking of subsidising life in Dubai with a rental income from their property.

Unless they are catering for one specific group, most international schools take a neutral stance on religion and politics and don’t promote any particular viewpoint.

My post was directed at anyone who has a house (own not earn - bloody autocorrect) that they don't live in.

How is it not relevant to you?

I did say it was for another thread as don't want to derail ops threas.

Honestly there is no such thing as a neutral stance on religion and politics. People think something is neutral because it roughly aligns with their thinking.

Unaffiliated then.

Officially, but very 'western' culture wise and pretty left wing. Eg being anti-Trump is pretty much a given.

The closest we can get to neutral teaching on religion is a Religious Studies - style curriculum where it's taught like 'here are the basic tenets and practices of Christianity. Here is a bit on its history.' The quality of this varies - things get oversimplified, but then it's generally just to serve as an introduction to various religions.

In Dubai?! I wasn't aware of any school allowed to teach RS in Dubai. Maybe ASD (I know they don't have to teach Arabic so seen to have special powers over the KHDA!).

No, but your comment did not specify Dubai either. It seemed to veer from this Dubai thread into a general philosophical point about neutral stances not being possible at all.

My comment was relevant to the discussion on Dubai. The OP will not consider the major British international schools we are talking about as neutral if she is looking for an Islamically focused education. They are very much biased to a 'western' and fairly liberal mindset. This suits me and my family, because they are aligned with our belief system. They're most definitely not neutral in terms of politics and religion.

The only teaching on religion allowed in Dubai schools is Islamic education, which is compulsory for Muslim students. Some of the more cultural aspects of Islam as practised in Dubai are also covered in Cultural and Moral Studies (eg they may look at Ramadan and similar in this class but more from the basis of what this means culturally than the detail of the religious requirements).

This general liberal approach of the schools can sometimes completely clash with the reality of living in an Islamic country. Children in these schools (and to be fair most of their parents!) live in a bubble and it can be a shock when the bubble bursts. My children's school recently had to remove Harry Potter from the school library for example and the children are in uproar. The school of course can't officially support, but I'll make a bet not a single teacher does and I doubt they're doing a good job of explaining why it's happened.

LGB for example. Some (NOT ALL) Muslims consider it a sin, just as some Christians do [This is not the same thing as saying people who are gay are evil - as my daughter's 9 year old friend said 'if you were gay I couldn't support your choice because it's against my religion, but obviously I would still be your friend'.]

The type of school my kids go to complies with requirements not to promote to children (because they have to), but if the school started to voluntarily teach that being gay was sinful, you'd find the parent body in uproar and multiple teachers quitting. There are other schools where this would be the default position of both parents and staff.

There are some US curriculum Islamic schools where faith plays a larger part, such as Next Generation School. Some of the leadership are British.