Debbie Griffin and her partner were simply not happy in the UK. “We weren’t happy with the safety for the kids, or the tax system,” she says. “The private school fees were the last straw.”
Until September 2024, the couple raised their three children, aged five, 14 and 25, in Northamptonshire. But after the 20 per cent VAT increase was announced on private schools in July, they decided to take action.
They had visited Dubai several times as a family on holiday and loved the weather, but at first, Griffin, 46, was reluctant to make the move as she was afraid of disrupting her daughter’s education. “We had a nice house in England,” she says. “But you would have expected us to have a little bit of money to put aside each month. With the rising bills, we couldn’t.”
Griffin and her husband own several businesses working as accountants, but the private school fee hike was set to increase their bills by £5,000 a year. “It was just constant money in the UK and having to pay some kind of tax,” she says. “We’re not rich. We’re just normal people, but we were really drained by all the bills. If you’re mega-rich, you don’t really notice these things, but for the people in the middle like us, it was a real problem.”
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Private school affordability was a dealbreaker for Griffin. Her eldest daughter, 25, struggled at their local state school and left school without any GCSEs. “She struggles with anxiety issues, which I think a lot of that age group do. We think she has undiagnosed autism. You can only get a diagnosis if you’re 4.5 on the autism scale, and they put her at a 3.8, so she didn’t get any extra help or support at her school.”
While her primary school was supportive, her secondary school experience was “horrendous”, she says. “So when we had our next child, many years later, we said straight away that we would save to send her to private school so she would have more support.”
Griffin also had hopes to send her youngest son, but the fee changes made that future uncertain. “Our local catchment area school is not great,” she says. “I have friends whose kids are in that school, and a lot of them are struggling. I know there are some great state schools in England and great grammar schools, but that wasn’t the case in our area.”
The couple’s conversations kept returning to the financial freedom they would have if they moved to the UAE, which doesn’t charge income tax. The final straw came when Labour announced it would raise the VAT on private school fees if it won the election. “This was in April last year. We said, let’s apply for some Dubai school places and see what happens. If she gets a place, then we will go. She got a place on 30 June.” The family quickly applied for a visa and left on 16 August.
The Griffins pay £17,000 a year for their daughter’s education in Dubai, which is £8,000 less than in the UK. They live in a large villa in the suburban area of Dubai, with a green garden and a nearby community pool. In a year, the Griffins estimate they will have saved £75,000 in tax and reduced school fees.
The Griffin family aren’t alone. There has been a surge in UK residents moving to the UAE in recent years, with 30,000 new arrivals in 2021, followed by 35,000 in 2022 and 40,000 in 2023. Now, a new cohort is moving in to the cities’ high-rises: private school parents.
Samantha, from London, says eight families from her daughter’s private secondary school have now either moved or are about to move to Dubai. “VAT increase has been the last straw,” she says. “One dad I know was offered a relocation two years ago, but his daughter was happy in the school, so he turned it down. But because of the VAT, he ended up accepting the job offer in January this year.”
Dubai’s private schools are reporting rising applications. Kieran McLaughlin, headteacher of the Durham School Dubai, says they have seen a 15 per cent increase in applicants from the UK in the past year. “The year before, in 2023, we averaged about a 5 per cent increase, so that is quite a significant difference,” he says. “Families are not happy with the quality of life in the UK. They move because they know the opportunities their children will get here are wider. It’s a very safe place to live. In the long run, it’s much cheaper to raise a family.”
Kieran McLaughlin is the headteacher of the Durham School, a private school in DubaiGriffin admits that living in Dubai is expensive at first. “You have to pay for rent up front here, so you have to use a good chunk of savings to pay for the year’s rent, but if you stay for a few years, you recoup that because then you’re not paying tax. It might take you a year, but then you can rebuild your savings.”
In the six months they have been in the UAE, Griffin has struggled to make friends. “It does take time to settle here. It’s a very transient country, so it is quite hard to meet people. I’m not there yet, but every day gets a little bit better. My husband loves it, and my daughter loves it. What 15-year-old wouldn’t love living in a hot country? We go to the community pool nearby where we live every day.”
Griffin’s daughter is thriving in her new school. “She’s actually doing a lot better than she was at her UK private school,” she says. “Her grades are much higher, and she is making friends.” Griffin’s planned to get her a private tutor when she moved to Dubai. When she informed the new school, the teachers immediately offered private tutoring outside of school hours at no extra cost. “We wouldn’t have been offered that at her old school. They are really dedicated.”
Griffin’s daily life is similar to her workday in the UK, as she works from home. “Some people come here to live the high life, and they’re out brunching every weekend. They’re going to all these amazing events that you can go to in Dubai, but we’re pretty normal,” she says. “We just live our quiet life.” At the moment, there isn’t a huge windfall in their finances, as they have had to pay for their housing upfront, but in the next year, Griffins expects to start seeing the impact of living without income tax.
Her son is in nursery three days a week. On the two days of the working week when he is at home, they head to the nearby beach, a 15-minute drive away. “We might go to the mall, and at the weekend we might go to a hotel as a family.” They are soon planning a trip to the Maldives: “Everyone goes on holiday to very exotic locations here as it’s much closer.” White sand holidays are much more affordable from the UAE as flights are much shorter and cheaper.
The best part about their new life is the safety. “The kids out here go to the park from a young age alone. It’s a very friendly place. They’re safe,” she says. “I let my daughter go in taxis. I would never do that in England. But now she can go in a taxi to the mall with her friends. I know nothing’s going to happen to her. I didn’t have that security in England.”
As a mother, Griffin also feels more at ease. “They treat mothers and pregnant women with a lot more respect than in the UK,” she says. “I can go to the front of the queue in shops if I’ve got my little one, unless there’s an Emirate in the queue, and then they go first. But that makes sense, it’s their country.”
Still, Griffin misses her friends and family. “I miss my family. I miss England. I miss the greenery and not having sand everywhere,” she says. Once her children have completed their private education, the couple plan to return home. “Still,” she says, “it’s definitely a good experience.”
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