How to Find the Right International Cambridge School in Riyadh: A Parent’s Firsthand Guide
Three years ago, I sat at my kitchen table in our Riyadh apartment, coffee gone cold, with 17 open tabs in my browser all labeled “international Cambridge school Riyadh”. My 10-year-old son, Sam, was on the couch next to me, picking crumbs off a sticky date cookie, still sore from his first month at the school we’d picked sight unseen based on a friend’s offhand recommendation. He’d come home crying three nights in a row that week, saying the teacher moved too fast in math, the curriculum mixed American and British standards so he couldn’t catch up, and no one had time to answer his questions about the volcano project he wanted to do for the school fair. My husband was out on a work site, and I realized I had no clue what I was actually looking for beyond “Cambridge curriculum” and “not this one”.
I’d moved to Riyadh from Dubai for my husband’s job, and I assumed finding a Cambridge school would be straightforward—everyone I knew talked about the great international options here. But I quickly learned that most online lists are paid advertisements, and Facebook group recommendations are often from parents who got a discount for referring new families. I went to two viewings before I realized I was judging all the wrong things.
The first school I visited was one of the biggest names in the city, located near the Diplomatic Quarter. The lobby had marble floors and a wall of trophies for basketball and debate. When we asked if we could sit in on a Year 6 Cambridge class to see how it ran, the admissions coordinator said we’d have to wait three weeks for the next scheduled open house. Sam’s face fell, and I knew right then that wasn’t the place. A school that won’t let you see a regular class before you enroll is hiding something, I thought. The second school was closer to our house in North Riyadh, advertised as fully Cambridge, but when we asked about support for Sam’s mild dyslexia, which we’d had diagnosed back in Dubai, the admin said they only had one part-time support counselor for 800 students, and any extra help would cost 500 SAR an hour out of pocket. That was out of our budget, and it just felt wrong that extra support for a common learning difference was treated like a luxury add-on.
I texted my neighbor, who’s a primary school teacher at another international school here, and asked her what I was missing. She told me to stop looking at the marketing brochures and start asking the small questions that no one posts online. That’s when I started building the list of small checks that I now pass on to every parent who asks me for help.
First, she said, not every school that says it’s “Cambridge” is actually accredited for the full pathway from primary through A-levels. A lot of schools only offer Cambridge for the last two years of high school, and use a different curriculum for younger years, which can mess up the transition for kids who want to apply to university in the UK or Europe. The simple check: before you even book a visit, ask the admissions team to send you a copy of their current Cambridge International accreditation. Check that it covers the year group your kid is in, not just the senior school. That one check takes two minutes and weeds out half the options right away.
Second, don’t just look at the distance between the school and your house on a map. I’d totally missed that 12 kilometers in Riyadh during morning drop off (between 7 and 8 AM) can take 40 minutes, not 15. Sam would have had to wake up at 6:15 every day to make it on time, which is brutal for a pre-teen. My neighbor told me to pull up Google Maps, set the departure time to 7 AM on a weekday, and check the estimated commute before you add a school to your list. I did that, and crossed three schools off immediately that would have meant an hour round trip every day just for drop off. That’s a small change that makes every day easier, and no one talks about it enough.
When we narrowed it down to a small, mid-sized school 15 minutes from our house that checked the accreditation box, we did one more thing she suggested: we hung around the pickup gate for 10 minutes before dismissal and asked three random parents what they thought of the school. One mom told us the homework load was reasonable, not the four hours a night that some of the bigger schools push to keep their university acceptance rates up. Another said her daughter also had dyslexia and got twice-weekly small group support included in the regular fees. When we went in for our visit, the principal let Sam sit in on a science class that same day, no waiting for an open house. He came out with ink on his hands from drawing volcano diagrams, and said the teacher had asked him what he thought about chemical reactions instead of just making him take notes.
We enrolled him, and it hasn’t been perfect. Last month, there was a three-day disruption to classes because of delayed teacher pay, which caught us off guard. They don’t have an Olympic-size swimming pool like the big fancy school, so Sam does his swim training at a local community club after school instead. He still complains about the canteen pizza being too greasy some days. But for us, it’s worked. Sam’s grades have improved, he’s taking extra Cambridge science classes after school, and he doesn’t cry about going to school anymore.
I get at least two messages a month from new expat parents moving to Riyadh asking me how to find a good international Cambridge school here. Most of them start by asking what the “best” school is, and I tell them there’s no such thing. The best school is the one that fits your kid’s needs, your budget, and your daily routine. The concrete steps I tell every parent to take are simple: check the accreditation upfront, test your commute during drop off hours, talk to random parents at the gate instead of just listening to the admissions team, and ask for a full fee breakdown that includes every extra charge from books to field trips. It doesn’t take fancy research, just slowing down enough to check the small stuff that actually matters every day. We’re still waiting to see how Sam’s IGCSEs go next year, and we’ll cross the A-level bridge when we get there. For now, this works.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » How to Find the Right International Cambridge School in Riyadh: A Parent’s Firsthand Guide