What Are International Schools Like in Saudi Arabia: A Parent’s Firsthand Experience
I stood fanning myself with a crumpled orientation brochure at the school gate in Riyadh, watching my 7-year-old Lila twist the logo on her new blue water bottle. It was our first week in Saudi Arabia, and I’d spent the three months before the move scrolling through expat forums, collecting every rumor imaginable: International schools here are only for millionaires. They’re strictly segregated. They won’t help if your kid struggles with learning. They censor everything kids learn. Lila’s hand slipped into mine, and I wondered if I’d just messed up her education for my husband’s job posting.
Three years later, I’ve had enough time to see what life at an international school here is actually like, beyond the clickbait and secondhand stories. Lila’s K-8 school, one of the larger British-curriculum schools in Riyadh, has 18 kids in her class from 11 different countries. Her first best friend was Nora, a Saudi girl whose parents are both healthcare consultants, who enrolled here because the IB diploma program the school offers in high school lets Nora apply to any university in Europe or North America when she graduates. About 30% of the student body at Lila’s school is Saudi, a number I didn’t expect to see before moving—most local families who can afford international tuition choose it for the global curriculum and language opportunities, not just for expats.
I worried about the dress code before we arrived, packing all new longer skirts and tops just in case. The school’s rule is simple: shoulders and knees must be covered, the same rule I’ve seen at many private schools back home in Canada. Lila wears the same leggings and polo shirts she wore before we moved, and girls can choose to cover their hair or not—Nora wears a hijab, a few other girls don’t, and no one comments on it either way. The school calendar builds in full breaks for Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, plus gives students excused absences for Christmas, Diwali, and Hanukkah if families want to take time off to celebrate. Lila came home with a colored rice rangoli craft after Diwali last year, and a paper menorah a month later, small things that felt welcoming for all families.
Halfway through second grade, Lila’s teacher emailed me saying she was falling behind on reading. I broke out in a cold sweat, remembering all the forum posts that claimed international schools in the Gulf kick out kids with learning differences to keep their test scores up. We met with the school’s learning support coordinator, Zara, a former teacher from Johannesburg, who tested Lila that month and confirmed she had mild dyslexia. Within two weeks, Zara had a plan: Lila would be pulled out twice a week for 30-minute small-group reading sessions, she got access to audio books for all her class novels, and her written homework was cut in half to reduce frustration. It wasn’t perfect—Zara covers three different international schools across Riyadh, so it sometimes took two weeks to get a 15-minute call with her when we had questions. But it was more consistent support than my public school back home gave me when I was a kid with the same diagnosis, honestly.
Last year, we participated in the school’s annual International Day, where each family brings a dish from home and sets up a small booth. I made poutine, which confused half the parents but was a hit with the kids who’d never tried cheese curds. There were samosas from a family in Mumbai, mint lemonade from a family from Morocco, and a big spread of dates and kabsa from the Saudi families in Lila’s class. The kids walked around with paper passports, getting stamps from each booth, and Lila came home with a pocket full of glitter stickers and a stomach ache from too many sweets. It’s the kind of event that feels unremarkable here, but it’s something she’d never get at a small local school back home.
After talking to dozens of parents moving to Saudi looking for advice, I’ve learned what concrete questions actually matter, beyond the rumors. First, confirm the curriculum matches your long-term goals. There are international schools here following British, American, IB, Indian CBSE, French, and German national curriculums, so if you know where you want your kid to go to university, pick a school that aligns with that. Second, be prepared for tuition costs: most expats get a full or partial tuition allowance from their employer, but if you’re paying out of pocket, expect between $15,000 and $35,000 a year, depending on grade level and the school’s reputation. Third, if your kid has any learning needs, don’t just ask if the school offers support—ask how many full-time support staff they have per student, and request a meeting with the support team before you enroll. A lot of smaller schools will say they offer support, but it’s one person for 400 kids, which isn’t enough for consistent help.
The question I get asked most often is about open discussion and censorship. It’s true there are boundaries around certain political topics, same as there are in schools in many countries around the world. But for everyday K-12 learning, it barely impacts daily life. Lila’s 5th grade class did a whole unit on climate change last semester, and organized a school-wide recycling drive that’s still running. They talk about different religions, different family structures, all the same things they would at an international school in London or Dubai. The boundaries exist, but they don’t disrupt most kids’ learning, contrary to what a lot of people online claim.
We’re likely moving back to Canada in two years, and Lila already says she doesn’t want to leave. Last week, she came home talking about a project she’s doing with Nora and a boy from Kenya on endangered desert species, which they’ll present at the school’s science fair in March. There are still annoying, frustrating things: the school sometimes changes the calendar last minute for royal holidays, which messes up our travel plans. The drop-off parking lot is always a chaotic mess, and Zara is still stretched too thin to give every kid the time she’d like. It’s not the perfect school I dreamed of before moving, and it’s not the restrictive, closed school I feared either. It’s just a school, full of messy, normal kid stuff, that happens to sit in Riyadh. Some days it’s better than what we had back home, some days it’s harder. It’s still working itself out, same as we are.
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