Guides for school parents
FS1, FS2, KG1, Year 1: UAE school year groups explained
Move to the UAE, pick a school, and the first form asks a question you suddenly cannot answer: what year group is your child in? Your neighbour's daughter is in FS2, the school down the road calls the same age KG1, your cousin in another school says LKG, and the friend with the IB school talks about PYP. Same children, five different ladders.
Here they all are, side by side, with the ages. Two minutes and the forms stop being confusing.
The one rule that decides everything: 31 August
In Dubai and most of the UAE, your child's age on 31 August decides the year group they enter that September. Not their age at enrolment, not the calendar year they were born: their age on that one date. A child born 1 September starts a whole year later than a child born the day before. Indian-curriculum schools run April to March, so their ladder rolls over in spring instead.
The ladders, side by side
| Age on 31 Aug | British | American / MOE | Indian | IB |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | FS1 | Pre-K | Nursery | Early Years |
| 4 | FS2 | KG1 | LKG | Early Years |
| 5 | Year 1 | KG2 | UKG | PYP 1 |
| 6 | Year 2 | Grade 1 | Class 1 | PYP 2 |
| 7 | Year 3 | Grade 2 | Class 2 | PYP 3 |
| 8 | Year 4 | Grade 3 | Class 3 | PYP 4 |
| 9 | Year 5 | Grade 4 | Class 4 | PYP 5 |
| 10 | Year 6 | Grade 5 | Class 5 | PYP 6 |
| 11 | Year 7 | Grade 6 | Class 6 | MYP 1 |
| 12 | Year 8 | Grade 7 | Class 7 | MYP 2 |
| 13 | Year 9 | Grade 8 | Class 8 | MYP 3 |
| 14 | Year 10 | Grade 9 | Class 9 | MYP 4 |
| 15 | Year 11 | Grade 10 | Class 10 | MYP 5 |
| 16 | Year 12 | Grade 11 | Class 11 | DP 1 |
| 17 | Year 13 | Grade 12 | Class 12 | DP 2 |
Two honest caveats. IB schools label their early and middle years all sorts of ways (some say Grade, some say Year, some say PYP), so treat that column as the typical pattern and trust your own school's naming. And a handful of schools use a slightly different cut-off date: the school's admissions page always wins.
The patterns worth remembering
- British and American are one label apart, all the way up. FS2 sits with KG1, Year 1 with KG2, Year 2 with Grade 1, and from there Year N pairs with Grade N minus 1 until Year 13 meets Grade 12.
- FS stands for Foundation Stage (the British nursery years), and the F in words like "FS1 intake" on school letters is the same thing.
- LKG and UKG are Lower and Upper Kindergarten in the Indian system: LKG pairs with FS2/KG1, UKG with Year 1/KG2.
- British curriculum finishes at Year 13; American and Indian at Grade/Class 12. Same finish age, different label.
Why schools care so much about the label
Because everything hangs off it: which class lists your child appears on, which trips and clubs they can join, which uniform list applies, and which of the school's twelve weekly emails are actually about your child. Get the year group right once and the rest of the admin sorts itself around it.
The label matters at home too
Hey Raha reads your school emails and turns them into one calm daily plan, and the year group is how she knows which emails are about which child: a "Year 4 swimming letter" lands on the right child's plan, not the whole family's. She speaks all five ladders (FS2, KG1, UKG, PYP, all of it), and each September she quietly suggests the move up so you never have to remember to update it.
Made in the UAE, so she knows FS2 from Year 1 and a term-fee deadline in AED.
Try Hey Raha freeMore from this series: Too many school emails? The three-list system that actually works and How to stop school emails taking over your Gmail.
One calm message a week on WhatsApp: follow Raha's channel for what's coming in the school year.