I wrote an article on January 31, 2013 under the above headline. I am quoting a part of that article after reading an investigative report by local newspaper Al Arab on May 7, 2014 about schools charging tuition fees according to the nationality of the students.
In that article, I said that private schools were set up in our country to make profits, which is fine by me.
I have no objection if private schools make profits in order to provide laboratories, equipment, libraries and qualified and experienced teachers.
Teachers need a respectable salary so that they do not have to do a second job. They should also get suitable accommodation.
Students should connect with their schools as partners, not in the profits but in raising the stature of the schools with their attainments.
We need private capital to build schools that keep pace with changes and scientific advances. But we do not want commercial schools that only seek profits.
We read the investigative report that I referred to at the beginning. The report is about the concerns of parents regarding unacceptably high fees.
In the report, Um Essam said that her children were in a school where she used to pay around QR22,000 a year.
She took them to another branch of the same school and was surprised to find that tuition fees in that branch were around QR40,000-50,000, in addition to a registration fee of QR1,200 that is not returned if the student is not accepted. Is this reasonable?
Um Badr said that she had to pay QR130,000 in tuition fees for the coming school year for her five children.
We ask the authorities to limit the profits of private schools to five to eight percent, and that their annual audits are done by the government’s audit bureau.
I would like to appeal to the Minister of Education and Higher Education, H E Mohammed Abdel Wahed Ali Al Hamadi, to save the families of students from the brutality of some school owners who do not care about anything but profits.
Manal Abdulghany wondered about the role of the Supreme Education Council in setting tuition fees.
She said that she had heard and read a lot in newspapers that the Council had regulations regarding raising tuition fees, that schools are allowed to increase the fees only every three years or if there are reasonable grounds for an increase.
Operators of private schools should be asked one question: Do they hike the salaries of teachers by the same percentage by which they increase tuition fees?
It is known that salaries of expatriate teachers are very low and their accommodations sometimes do not suit their position, therefore they are forced to do a second job to improve their financial situation.
We demand that the Ministry of Education and Higher Education intervene to ban any increase in tuition fees unless it is ordered by the minister himself after investigating and looking into the reasons behind any request to increase
tuition fees.
We would like to appeal to private school owners: “Be merciful to those suffering from misfortune and low incomes. Be merciful so God would have mercy on you.”
