Administrative
Resolution No. (39) of 2026
Concerning
the
Requirements
and Procedures for
Approving
or Changing Names of Early Childhood Centres[1]
ــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ
The
Director General of the Knowledge and Human Development Authority in Dubai,
After perusal of:
Law
No. (2) of 2021 Concerning the Knowledge and Human Development Authority in
Dubai (the “KHDA”);
Executive
Council Resolution No. (35) of 2020 Regulating Early Childhood Centres in the
Emirate of Dubai and its amendments; and
Executive
Council Resolution No. (17) of 2025 Approving the Organisational Structure of
the Knowledge and Human Development Authority in Dubai,
Does
hereby issue this Resolution.
The
words and expressions mentioned in this Resolution have the same meanings
respectively assigned to them in the above-mentioned Executive Council
Resolution No. (35) of 2020.
The
name of a Centre will be approved subject to the following requirements:
1.
The name proposed for the Centre
must not be registered, reserved, or similar to the name of another Centre in
the UAE.
2.
The name of the Centre must not
contain any wording that suggests, directly or indirectly, that the Centre is connected
with any person who has no actual association with the Centre.
3.
The name of the Centre must not
contain any wording that may mislead the public.
4.
The name of the Centre must not
include any of the Names of Allah or the name of any Government Entity, unless
the Centre is owned by that entity.
5.
The name of the Centre must not
include the name or logo of any government or non-government entity from
outside the UAE, or imply that the Centre is a branch of any such entity,
unless the prior approvals of the KHDA, the concerned entities, and the proprietor
of such name or logo have been obtained.
6.
The Centre must first obtain the
approvals of competent entities before using the name of any country, city,
state, province, particular geographical area, existing school, or Curriculum
in its name.
7.
The name of the Centre must not contain
anything that contravenes any of the legislation in force in the UAE, the
public order, or the public morals; or that infringes any intellectual property
rights.
8.
Subject to obtaining the necessary
approvals from the concerned entities, the name of a branch of a Centre must be
identical to the name of the parent Centre, and must be followed by the word
“Branch” or by the name of the geographical area in which that branch will be
established.
9.
Where the Centre is a branch of an
international parent Centre, it must obtain the prior approval of the proposed
name from the international Centre.
In
addition to the requirements stipulated in Article (2) of this Resolution, the
name of a Centre will be changed subject to the following requirements:
1.
The name of the Centre must be
changed upon the end of the School Year during which the name change is
requested and before the start of the new School Year.
2.
The Centre must satisfy all
requirements for changing its name as prescribed by the competent Licensing
Authority.
In
approving or changing the name of a Centre, the following procedures will
apply:
1.
An application for approval or
change of the name of the Centre will be submitted to the KHDA through the
electronic system adopted by it for this purpose. The application must be
submitted on the form prepared by the KHDA for this purpose, together with the
required supporting documents.
2.
The KHDA will consider the
application, and the documents attached thereto, to verify that the applicant
has satisfied all the conditions and requirements and that the application is
accompanied by all the relevant documents stipulated in Articles (2) and (3) of
this Resolution. The KHDA may request any additional documents, data, or
information it deems necessary for considering the application.
3.
The KHDA will issue its decision on
the application within a period not exceeding six (6) working days from the
date on which the applicant is notified that all required data and documents
for the approval or change of name have been submitted. The application will be
deemed rejected if no decision is issued by the KHDA within this period.
4.
Where an application is rejected,
the KHDA will notify the applicant of the reasons for rejection. An applicant
whose application is rejected may submit a new application after addressing the
reasons for rejection.
Upon
the approval of the name of a Centre by the KHDA or upon obtaining its approval
for changing that name, the Centre must:
1.
display its name, in both Arabic and
English, in a prominent place, and ensure that the displayed name is identical
to the name approved by the KHDA;
2.
use the name approved by the KHDA in
all correspondence, publications, advertisements, and official letterhead of
the Centre;
3.
notify Parents of any change to the
name of the Centre;
4.
where the name of a Curriculum is to
be used in the name of the Centre, meet the academic accreditation requirements
prescribed by the KHDA for that Curriculum; and
5.
update all records, licences,
official documents, signage, and advertisements to reflect the approved name of
the Centre.
The
Chief Executive Officer of the Growth and Human Development Sector of the KHDA
will issue the instructions required for the implementation of the provisions
of this Resolution.
This
Resolution will be published in the Official Gazette and will come into force
on the day on which it is published.
Aisha
Abdulla Miran
Director General
Knowledge and Human Development Authority in Dubai
Issued in Dubai on 18 June 2026
Corresponding to 3 Muharram 1448 A.H.
©2026 The Supreme Legislation Committee in the
Emirate of Dubai
[1]Every effort has been made to produce an accurate
and complete English version of this legislation. However, for the purpose of
its interpretation and application, reference must be made to the original
Arabic text. In case of conflict, the Arabic text will prevail.