Admission Process In Abu Dubai Schools

Everything changes when you shift to a new country or Gulf country. Your lifestyle, food, timetable, environment, friends, schools, and offices change. It takes some time to settle into a new environment. When people shift to other countries due to job changes or new job offers or for business purposes, many prefer to go alone first. Because they know they are going to a completely different environment and it will take some time for them to adapt to the lifestyle and environment there. Once they settle down, after a few months, they call their family either on a visit visa or a family visa. Calling your family on a visit visa differs greatly from a family visa. In a visit visa, you will call them to stay with you for only 3 to 6 months and then go back to their residential country. This requires only a visit visa, a house for rent, and some household furniture. But when you call your family on a family or residence visa, you may need so many things including a family visa.  You will first need to apply for a family visa. Once you get the family visa you have to apply for Emirates IDs, Family insurance, a house for rent, all household furniture, House essentials, school admissions if you have kids, a new car, a new driving license, and of course a good salary job for a comfortable lifestyle. This will take some time and money to be ready.

However, school admissions are very different in Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Before moving to Dubai, we need to find out which schools are the best in that particular country and their education facilities. Of course, this is a very important task for every parent before enrolling their kids in schools. You must check the school background, hygiene system, extra circular activities, the religious cultures they follow, budget-friendly fees, and the best rating from the Abu Dhabi government. Because Gulf countries have many other schools like American schools, British schools, Arabic schools, Pakistani schools, and many more. When we moved to Dubai, I had the same doubts and confusion. There are many British, American, Indian, Pakistani, and Arabic schools here.  

Since we are from India, I made a list of all the Indian schools in AbuDhabi along with their fee structure and rating to choose the best one for my 5-year-old kid. Before we were in Dubai and later shifted to AbuDhabi due to job change. I have written an article on budget-friendly Indian schools in Dubai. You can check out the link to learn about the schools in Dubai. The school rules here in Dubai and Abu Dhabi are a bit different from India. All the school guidelines here are made by ADEK (Abu Dhabi Department of Education and Knowledge) of UAE (United Arab Emirates). Here is the list of Indian schools in Abu Dhabi that I made for my kids. Budget-friendly Indian schools in Abu Dhabi. 

Online registration on the school website is compulsory here in AbuDhabi if you want to take admission for your kid. You cannot just go directly to the school and talk to them for admission. After the online application, they will send you an email regarding your kid’s entrance exam and when to come to school based on vacancy in that particular class. After online registration, you can either visit the school or call them on their customer support, if they don’t respond by mail within 15 days. Registration here in Indian schools starts in October and November. Some schools start after October 15 and some start after November 5th.  Since admissions here start in October and end in January, I started applying to all the Indian schools in Dubai from October 25th to November 5th. After a few days, my husband got a job offer from Abu Dhabi. So we planned to shift to Abu Dhabi after one month. I applied to 15 Indian schools in Abu Dhabi within four days. Their online registration is very easy. Anyone can apply online. How to apply, the registration process, the admission process, and what documents are needed for school admission are all mentioned on every school’s website.  

Here I will tell you a few things that they will ask you and what documents you have to keep ready for online school registration:-

• A passport-size photo in PDF, JPEG, JPG, or PNG format. Some schools mention a specific size, such as less than 6MB. If you want to format your photo or change its size and format, you can use the I LOVE IMAGES and I LOVE PDF websites to format your images and documents. 
• Your kid’s government attested Birth certificate. This should be in a PDF file.
• Vaccination card in which all the vaccines that are given to your kid since birth should be mentioned.
• Front and Back side of your kid’s Passport.
• Front and Back side of mother’s Passport.
• Front and Back side of father’s Passport.
• Emirates ID of your Kid.
• Emirates ID of Mother.
• Emirates ID of Father.
• Residence visa document of your kid in pdf file.
• Residence visa of the mother.
• Tenant contract (Documents of your rented house in Dubai or Abu Dhabi).
• Insurance card of your kid.
• Father’s and mother’s employee visa. (If the mother is a homemaker, you can give only the father employee visa)
• Father’s and Mother’s office address. (If the mother is a homemaker, you can give only the father’s office address)
• Parent’s mobile number.
• Parent’s email id.
• Passport-size photos of both Parents.
• Google map location of your house in which you are living.
• If you want to take a school bus then you have to apply another form for a school bus facility. This form will be mentioned on the school website.

  After applying to all these schools, I didn’t get any call or reply from any school. I waited for 2 weeks and after that, I started calling and emailing every school to know my son’s admission status. Some of them didn’t lift the calls, and some replied that our son’s registration is on the waiting list and that if there are any vacancies in the school then my son can get admission, some told me registrations would start in January, and some told since my son is taking kg2 admission, he will get admission only if any kg1 student who is already in the school drops out of the school. Getting admission in KG 1 is very easy in schools as it is the first class and there are all new admissions. All the KG 1 students will be promoted to the KG2 section. That is why getting admission to KG2 is difficult. After one month I got a call from an Indian school for a face-to-face entrance test. We felt very happy and were ready to go no matter how costly the school fees were. We went to the school, and my son passed the entrance test. The teacher told me right after the assessment test that she would give admission to my son as he is good and answered everything correctly. To know more about the assessment test and what the teacher asked, please visit this article. Assessment test of KG2 in an Indian school in Abu Dhabi. 

After a few days, we got emails from other 4 Indian schools that there were no seats available for the kg2 class and their seats were already full.  At the end of January, we got a call from the same Indian school in which we gave the assessment test. This call made me very happy. I thought we finally got the admission confirmation now. I lifted the call within seconds and said ‘Thank you for calling mam’ to the staff member. She told me that my son’s admission status is still on the waiting list and there is one vacancy in the kg1 class now in January. She asked me whether my son is going to any other school now or if is he in India. I told her that we were in Abu Dhabi and waiting for my son’s admission to the kg2 class. She told me that we can now join our kid in the kg1 class from January to March and pay the third term fee which is from January to March. She told me that since my son is at home, he can come to school for 2 months and after kg1 he will be directly promoted to kg2 without any waiting list. We have to pay the third term fee, book fee, uniform fee, and transport fee if we opt for the school bus. This made me a little bit anxious and stressed. She told me to decide in one hour after discussing it with my husband. I was confused a lot. I thought if there was a vacancy in the kg1 class, she could give that seat to my son for kg2. Instead, she wanted me to join my kid in kg1 first, pay the third term fee, kg1 books fee, and then after 2 months, again pay for kg2 admission fee.  This was going out of our financial budget as we were looking for a house for rent at that time. You need to give at least 3 months’ advance rent to the owner of the house before moving to the new house in Abu Dhabi. And we all know how costly the rent is in Gulf countries.  

I discussed this with my husband and he was ready to take admission to the kg1 class because he said we didn’t have any other option as we didn’t get any response from other schools. We also thought our son would go to school and learn many things for these 2 months instead of staying at home. My son also wanted to go to school now as he was also bored staying at home for more than 11 months. So we decided to pay the third term fee and we can rent a house after one month. I called the school and confirmed my son’s admission to the kg1 class. The next minute they sent me an admission form and told me to fill it out and send it back as softcopy in WhatsApp or email. I filled out the admission form, and transportation form, and sent all the original documents of my son’s Emirates ID, passport copy, vaccination card, Birth certificate, Passport size photo, parent’s Emirates ID, and my son’s health insurance card to their mail ID and on their WhatsApp number.  After sending all this she told me to wait for 3 days as they have sent the admission form to the ADEK for approval and they will need some time to update the admission status of my son from kg2 to kg1. After approval and update, they will send us the invoice for fee payment. Once we pay the fee, we can send our son to school the next day. 

After 5 days, we got the invoice. We paid the third term fee, books fee, uniform fee, and the transport fees online. We opted for a school bus because the school was far away from my brother-in-law’s home. We also went shopping to buy a new school bag, water bottle, lunch box, a stationery set, black shoes, and socks for my son. The next day we went to drop our kid to school. His school timings were from 8 am to 12 pm. He was very excited and a little bit nervous too as it’s been 11 months since he went to school. He studied kg1 or LKG in India. After his exams in March, my husband got a job offer in Dubai and we shifted to Dubai in August. At that time the school admissions were already over so we were not able to join our son in school in Dubai. After staying there in Dubai for 4 months, my husband again got a job offer in Abu Dhabi and hence we shifted here. Like this, we were busy shifting and traveling from one place to another. Getting a school admission here in Dubai and Abu Dhabi is very difficult. You cannot just go to school and take admission like we do in India. We have to fill out the online registration form first, and if there are any vacancies then only they will call you for the assessment test. They also follow the rule ‘First come First served’. Whoever fills the form first, will get the first opportunity for the entrance test. Since I filled out the form in the last week of October, I got a call from the school in December. 

Everyone who is planning to shift to Dubai or Abu Dhabi, please inquire about all the schools and their admissions before shifting and plan accordingly. Otherwise, your son’s one year will be wasted if you want your kid to join an Indian school or Pakistani school because admission in these schools starts from October to December. If you want your kids to study in an American school or a British school, you can apply for admission from June to August because their academic year starts in September. But these schools are very costly and many people cannot afford them. But their education is very good and is according to the American curriculum. If you are planning to send your children abroad after high school, these British and American schools will be very useful. Everything depends on your budget, planning, and the kind of lifestyle you want for your children. You will need to do a lot of research on schools and their admission process when you want to join your kids in schools. 

I hope you got a complete idea of the whole process of admission and assessment tests in Abu Dhabi schools. If you have any other doubts regarding schools and admissions please comment down below. I will reach you as soon as possible.