Fee freeze offers relief

DUBAI EXECUTIVE COUNCIL DIRECTS KHDA NOT TO INCREASE FEES IN ACADEMIC YEAR 2018-19

Social media abuzz with praise for Dubai Council’s move |

Parents who have children studying in private schools in Dubai welcomed the decision to freeze all school fee increase for the 2018-19 academic year, which they say will ease their already tight budgets.

The Dubai Executive Council on Wednesday issued a decision not to increase school fees for all private schools in the emirate for the coming academic year to reduce the financial burden on parents.

Shaikh Hamdan Bin Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman of the Dubai Executive Council, instructed the Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA) to put the decision into effect immediately by informing private schools and parents.

Venus Ramos, whose daughter is in second grade, lauded the council’s decision. Her daughter’s tuition fee in a British curriculum school near Jebel Ali is Dh16,928 per year, which, if she calculated in Philippine pesos, would be 236,992. This is more than enough to send a student to a premier university for one year for his bachelor’s degree back home.

“This is great news! This would help us greatly since

we’re a single-income family and my husband’s salary has remained the same for some time although our expenses are going up,” Ramos told Gulf News. “We’ve been scrimping and saving for months now, avoiding eating out and shopping because we’re prioritising our daughter’s education,” she added.

Uniforms and books

Ramos said her daughter’s school raises the fee by five per cent on average every year. They will instead use the savings they will get now with the fee freeze to buy her daughter’s uniforms and books.

Ghada Al Bagoury, a mother of three, said the council’s decision will greatly help parents with many kids studying in Dubai.

“Shaikh Hamdan’s decision to freeze Dubai school fees this year was highly welcomed by many parents specially those having more than one child. The timing of the decision coincides with the recent inflation in the cost of living due to the new taxes, so it goes along with the general direction of Dubai to be the happiest city in the world,” Al Bagoury said.

“Dubai does not stop to surprise us with positive initiatives ... One concern is the effect on schools. We hope, as parents, this will not affect the quality of education and will not be taken as an excuse for any excellence measures in this area,” she added.

Ashraf Biddah, who also has three children in Dubai, said the news filled him with joy.

“I am currently the director manager of eForce Engineering Consultancies and am responsible for two of my children who go to university and a daughter in secondary school, so having the school fees not increased is a huge release of financial burden off my shoulders. With the current situation, I believe it is a wise and considerate decision from the council’s part.”

Meanwhile, big school networks in Dubai said they would abide by the decision while others said their schools have already frozen fees even before this new announcement was made. “In line with the Government of Dubai’s school fee framework, GEMS Education will continue to work along with the regulators.

“Our priority continues to be providing a quality education across our network of schools,” a GEMS Education spokesperson told Gulf News in a statement.

Clive Pierrepont, director of Communications at Taaleem, said: “All of our schools except for Dubai British School Jumeirah Park, which is a new school, were granted fee increases [by KHDA]. However, for this academic year, we chose to freeze fees across the group.”

According to whichschooladvisor.com, as many as 22 private schools in Dubai decided to freeze fees for this year as early as 2017.