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While the close relationship between the British state and Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman (reigned 1970–2020) is widely recognised in the scholarship, the present article explores an aspect of the relationship that has hitherto attracted limited attention: the British role in Qaboos’s education and development from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s. Using a range of largely unexamined primary sources generated by the Arabian Department of the UK Foreign Office, it reveals what a ‘British education’ consisted of and implied in the case of Qaboos bid Said. It concludes that the British state understood the potential value of exerting an influence over the only son of Sultan Said bin Taymour, and strove to capitalise on its access to Qaboos during a formative period in his life. However, it is argued that the British state’s handling of Qaboos’s education reveals a lack of power, cohesion, and sometimes of interest. The article shows that the overwhelming influence over Qaboos’s education was his father, the sultan. At crucial moments, the Foreign Office failed to cooperate smoothly with other interested institutions, including the Shell oil company. Moreover, the Foreign Office’s commitment to the project of educating Qaboos oscillated in intensity and by the time Qaboos returned to Oman in 1964, British attitudes regarding their achievements with the would-be ruler were, at best, ambivalent.