Charles Bonas warned against placing too much weight on school brands alone, a common trend in Dubai’s fast-growing education market
For many families in the UAE, choosing a school is no longer just about the next academic year — it’s about where their children will stand in the job market a decade from now.
In an interview with Khaleej Times, Charles Bonas, founder of UK-based education consultancy Bonas MacFarlane, said parents in expatriate hubs like Dubai are increasingly driven by long-term employability concerns.
“Parents really feel (that these days), degrees are going to make their children more employable, but we have a crisis now around employability,” he said, adding that even “top graduates are not finding jobs,” a reality that is “feeding through into the education system.”
For UAE-based professionals — from pilots to bankers — this anxiety is sharpened by the prospect of eventually returning home.
“If you’re heading back to live in, say, North London from Dubai, you need to make sure that you’re up to that level,” Bonas said, pointing to the intense competition in major financial centres, where education systems struggle to keep pace with rapid population growth.
In the UAE, school choice is also deeply shaped by community trust.
“If you’ve got friends in Dubai and they recommend the school, you’re very likely to go and have a look at it and probably put your child there with them,” he said, stressing that “word of mouth referrals is very important,” alongside proximity to home.
But Bonas warned against placing too much weight on school brands alone, a common trend in Dubai’s fast-growing education market.
“You can put facilities, buildings, but if you haven’t got good teachers, doesn’t matter what the brand is,” added the veteran education consultant. He also noted that some long-established UAE schools consistently outperform newer, high-profile names when it comes to university placements.
He added that while brand recognition helps schools launch quickly, it may not guarantee long-term quality. “I don’t know how much longer this brand recognition environment will ensure,” he said, pointing to the need for substance over marketing.
Parents, he believes, are now taking a much longer view than before.
“Whereas in only a few years ago, the big emphasis was on where you make the transition to your senior school at age 11 or 13,” he said, “now parents are taking much longer view and saying that we’re looking at where they’re going to end up when they’re 23,24,25.”
Part of that shift is driven by the uncertainty of the future job market, particularly with the rise of artificial intelligence.
“The careers that your children are going to do don’t exist yet,” Bonas said. “I don’t really think the schools know about it either.”
Yet he stressed that a strong education foundation remains critical, especially as mid-level professional roles face growing pressure.
“If you (for example) want to go into the legal profession or the accounting profession, you’ve got to aim for the top of it,” he said. “It’s the mid-range professional jobs being threatened.”
Despite this, Bonas urged UAE parents not to overestimate what any single school can deliver on its own.
“Parents often put too much emphasis on the school,” he said. “They think that the school is going to do everything that’s required, it won’t.”
He described education as a shared responsibility between schools and families, noting that many parents now work in partnership with schools, supplementing learning with tutoring, enrichment activities, or home support.
In a city like Dubai, where many British families are experiencing private education for the first time, this shift is especially visible.
“There’s a lot of British parents who culturally have not been in the independent sector themselves,” he said. “This is the first time that their family has… dived in the deep end of independent education.”
Yet Bonas believes the UAE offers something uniquely valuable beyond academics — a global outlook.
“What I really like about international schools is that it gives a sort of dimension to a child’s life, which is really unrelated to any sense of nationalism,” he said.
He described children educated abroad as “citizens of the world,” adding that even a few years in an international environment can build confidence, adaptability and perspective.
“If anyone had the chance to go and live abroad to do so for education reasons,” he added, “it’s a very good thing to do.”
© Khaleej Times
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