American expatriate Amy Hicks lives in the Arabian Ranches residential community in Dubai, where there is a school that has an excellent reputation within walking distance of her house. However, Ms Hicks has been on the waiting list for the school for almost three years. So she drives up to 45 minutes each way to drop off and pick up her three children from a school on the other side of town.

There were other options closer to her home, but Ms Hicks says she was tremendously disappointed with the first school in which she enrolled her daughter. “No one in the class spoke English,” she says. “[My daughter was] ready to start reading, but these kids were still learning ABCs.”