In fact the situation regarding school entrance for kids starting secondary school September 04 in Dubai is at crisis point:
There are at least 90 kids without school places. Last year the number approached 30 and only the last minute opening of an additional class at JC prevented many kids from failing to start in September 03.
Options we are looking at include Sharjah and Abu Dhabi.
Sharjah could potentially be done without moving - as long as you are willing to have the kids in a car &/- bus for 90 minutes prior to school start - at least the first 45 minutes is us getting over to Mirdiff for a 7am bus pickup. However most of the Sharjah schools (which we are finding are quite full in their own right) share the problems of the Indian schools mentioned below.
Abu Dhabi would really require moving. On the 777 fleet at the moment I guess it's a possibility, given the nature of our rosters. Company transport would be out. Another problem is rents for villas in AUH which supposedly far exceed the company allowance (not that DXB is far behind).
The Principal of one of the major secondary schools here recently presented me with a solution however : I enrol my child in Our Own English Speaking School, or Cambridge High, or St Mary's, or Choi Fat School for 2-3 years, at which time he was sure I'd be able to transfer our child across to JC or DC of whichever schools had places at that time. For those not in the know - these are the schools Indian families place their kids in over here - fees are less than half (in some cases a quarter) of the more traditional expat schools and teaching methods and conditions are a little less flexible and innovative – you get what you pay for. I won't belabour the point, suffice to say it's an option we won't be exercising.
I know of about a dozen EK pilots affected by this - but there are probably more, we are a big part of the expat community over here. While we are investigating Home Schooling, Boarding School (for our 11 year old!), SHJ and AUH - I personally can't see any of these solutions being acceptable.
The Company has finally told us to sit tight until the end of April, at which time they will pressure the schools into accepting our kids. The mechanism by which they are going to do this has not been detailed. As much as EK can swing pressure here (they do pay an awful lot of school fees) things are so tight here that short of building a new school - this is no answer.
Regarding this last point - JESS is building a new high school to associate with it's primary school - but that's years away. JPS is moving to bigger premises and will use the old premises as a Primary school. The bigger premises will provide more places for secondary students, but will not be ready for at least 2 years - and even if this were to happen now, it would not cope with anywhere near 90 students. King's College is planned to open in time for September - but will be primary school only for at least the first two years. Note that all of these changes in secondary school capacity speak of evolutionary changes, as opposed to the exceptional situation we are now in.
The Dubai Government has enforced fee fixation here for a number of years now - one would say that the influence Ek exerts over the government (let's face it - they are the government) would hardly have gone against this policy. Several secondary schools have contemplated expansion over the last few years as they have anticipated this shortfall for a while, but they do not feel in control of their financial destinies and have therefore elected not to expand. Thus the fixation of fees policy is coming home to roost. As expensive as high school fees are here (all sitting at the max of 40,000+ dhs/year - 11000 USD) the schools would make them significantly higher if they could. The American schools here get around this problem by charging the full 40K all the way from Primary entry and up, whereas other Primary-only schools are in the mid twenties.
Anyone coming here with children need to have a good solid look at school availability, and quality of education - this second issue being something we've been sorely disappointed with, but that's another issue!