GEMS Education Says Teacher Attrition In UAE Schools Hits Historic Low

GEMS Education has reported its lowest teacher attrition rate in its history, with staff turnover across its portfolio falling to about 17 per cent as the UAE's private schools prepare to welcome students for the new academic year that commences on August 31.

The education group has hired 1,550 new teachers for the 2026-27 academic year, taking its educator community beyond 10,000.

While hiring remains challenging in the competitive international education market, GEMS Group CEO Dino Varkey told Khaleej Times on Wednesday, on the sidelines of the group's annual GEMS Awareness Day at Atlantis, The Palm in Dubai, that this year's recruitment drive“did not feel like a scramble”.

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The retention figures come as Dubai and Abu Dhabi continue to attract families and international educators, despite the disruption caused by regional tensions earlier this year.

Varkey said the group was“cautiously optimistic” about continued enrolment growth, although he does not expect it to match the pace seen in the three years after Covid.

For teachers, the numbers point to a broader shift in what has become a highly mobile international education workforce, where moving between countries and schools is common.

Varkey said GEMS had focused on retaining its strongest performers through targeted rewards, while accepting that some movement between schools and countries was inevitable.

“We still try and ensure that we're rotating our best and brightest, our highest performers by, again, rewarding them very specifically,” he said. "I think that's the only way."

The group's employee Net Promoter Score (NPS), a measure of employee engagement and willingness to recommend an organisation, is also at its highest level, Varkey said.

“I think I'm really pleased with our retention numbers for the year, and I'm really pleased with our employee NPS across the business," he said.“It's at the highest that I've ever seen it, and so this is all sort of encouraging sort of signals for me in around where we are from a people perspective.”

Across its portfolio, GEMS' attrition rate is currently about 17 per cent, down from 18-19 per cent last year. Varkey said this compares with a typical attrition figure of about 25 per cent for international schools globally.

“Attrition rates have been at our lowest attrition level in our in our history,” he said. "At a portfolio level for us, I think we're at 17 per cent...off the top of my head, and we were 18 or 19 per cent last year, so we're lower than last year."

At some individual schools, he said, turnover was significantly lower, at just 1-3 per cent.

The lower attrition rate has come alongside the recruitment of 1,550 teachers for the new school year. Varkey said the group did face a more difficult hiring environment, but did not have to resort to last-minute mass recruitment.

“It wasn't as if, oh my God, we've got hundreds upon hundreds of people that are withdrawing from schools, and we need to. It wasn't a scramble, as I would describe it," he said.

"Yes, it was more difficult. It was more challenging, but it never felt like an insurmountable challenge or you know a challenge where we'd still be sort of hiring people very late into the day."

Family retention is also holding relatively firm. GEMS expects to retain about 85 per cent of families, compared with 87 per cent last year. Varkey said the longer-term trend is more significant: when he joined the company more than two decades ago, family retention was around 71-72 per cent.

Today, he said, retention is closer to 86-87 per cent, which he sees as a sign that more families are choosing to establish longer-term lives in the UAE.

“The way that I look at that is, it's just a signal that more and more people are choosing Dubai and the UAE to build their lives. That's the reciprocal of that number.”

GEMS is also planning further expansion. The group expects to add 20,000 new school seats over the next three years, following the delivery of 5,000 seats so far, with about Dh2 billion earmarked for investment, primarily in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

“A significant share of that investment will target the group's mid-market and mid-market-plus schools,” Varkey said, as the network continues to expand across different fee segments including the“affordable segment".

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