This article charts the development of education in the lower Arabian Gulf from its traditional beginnings in the nineteenth century to the provision of more formal schooling and eventually a ministry of education following Britain's withdrawal from the region in 1971. In order to provide a better understanding of the complexities and relative advances and setbacks to this development, special emphasis is placed on the social, economic and political context of education's trajectory; including the lower Gulf's dependent relations with its Imperial protector and its reliance on foreign educational aid from Kuwait. (Contains 51 footnotes.)