What does a SEN governess cost in Dubai?

Nobody publishes this number, which is why every family asking it feels like they are being quoted from the air. The honest answer has two parts: what the specialist earns, and what the arrangement around her costs. They are different questions and conflating them is how families end up comparing offers that are not comparable.

What drives the specialist's salary

• Experience and credentials. A specialist with years of one-to-one work and a behaviour-technician certification is not priced like someone starting out, and should not be.
• Hours and structure. School hours, full days, split shifts and weekend cover all price differently. Split shifts price worst — they consume the whole day for a fraction of the pay.
• The complexity of the child's needs. Personal care, feeding support, high-intensity behaviour and medical considerations all change what the role is asking of someone.
• Language. If the household needs Arabic, Russian, Tagalog or French alongside English, the pool is smaller and the rate reflects it.
• Travel. Families who travel for the summer and want the routine to survive the trip are asking for something quite specific, and it is priced as such.

Anyone quoting you a flat monthly figure before asking about any of that is quoting a body, not a match.

What Special Minds charges

These are our fees, which are the only numbers we control, and they are the same whether you call the role a governess, a shadow teacher or an LSA.

Managed — we employ and supervise her. AED 15,000–30,000/mo, with AED 1,999 to open the search. The specialist stays on our books. A clinical lead writes the plan, reviews it, and changes it as your child progresses, and if the placement stops working we replace her.

Where a placement sits in that range depends on the hours, how complex your child's needs are, and how narrow the match has to be — a full day with personal care and a specific language is not the same role as three afternoons of homework support. If what you actually need is classroom-hours support rather than the whole day, that is a different service at AED 7,000–14,000/mo: see the managed LSA page.

Direct hire — you employ her. AED 1,499 to open the search, and a placement fee of one month of the candidate's agreed gross salary. We run the search, screen, interview and reference; you hire the person you choose onto your own arrangement and manage the role yourself. Details on the placement page.

Assessment, if the picture is not yet clear. AED 499 for a standalone behavioural and educational assessment with our Education and Program Director. It is the cheapest way to avoid hiring for the wrong problem. See the assessment page.

Why managed costs more, and when it is worth it

The managed fee buys three things a direct hire does not: somebody clinically qualified who owns the plan, a record that shows whether it is working, and a replacement when it is not. For a child whose needs are complex or changing, that is the difference between a placement and a gamble.

For a family who already knows exactly what they need, has managed household staff before, and wants a good person rather than a programme, direct hire is the cheaper and perfectly sensible answer. We will tell you which one we think you need, including when that is the smaller number.

The costs families forget

Employing someone directly means you carry the arrangement: the contract, the hours, the cover when she is ill or travelling, and the search again if it does not work out. Those are real costs even when they are not invoices. The reason they matter is that a placement that fails at month four costs far more than the difference between the two routes.

Before you compare quotes

Ask every agency the same four questions: who writes the plan, who reviews it and how often, what happens if the placement fails, and what exactly your fee covers. The answers will vary far more than the prices will.

Our SEN governess page sets out both routes side by side, and how to hire a SEN governess in the UAE is the checklist we would use ourselves.