DOHA: Qatar’s school regulator is mulling setting up a task force to crack down on private schools to follow up on public complaints about high fees and poor quality of education.
Erring schools will be issued warnings and if they fail to comply with rules within a specified period, they will be blacklisted.
Private schools have become a lucrative business in Qatar due to their low numbers. The country’s population has been exploding making the demand for schools rise rapidly.
The private schools office at the Supreme Education Council (SEC) says complaints are aplenty from parents and guardians of students against a number of private schools.
“We are studying those complaints and we will soon be taking decisions about the line of action to be taken,” a source at the SEC told Al Sharq.
The complaints are mostly about fees being high, lack of qualified teachers and facilities and the quality of education.
Some private schools continue to manage with assistant teachers for months on end as they fail to recruit qualified and experienced teachers.
The source said that one of the steps the SEC could take is form a task force whose members would be making surprise visits to schools against which complaints are made.
Members of the crack team or task force would be verifying these complaints during their visits and issuing warnings to the schools.
If the school takes remedial action within the specified time, it would be spared. Otherwise, action would follow, the source added.
According to local Arabic daily Al Watan, the SEC is now adopting a very tough stance towards private schools and has recently closed down the primary section of a school after it failed to mend its ways even after a stern warning.
The daily said that the warning was issued by the SEC sometime ago to the school to comply with rules and regulations in the new academic year but it didn’t.
The SEC source, meanwhile, told Al Sharq that there are strict directives from the Minister of Education and Higher Education about action to be sought against erring private schools.
“Our inspectors keep track of private schools. They make frequent visits, but there is a possibility a crack team might be made to follow up on specific complaints against private schools,” said the source.
Private schools include community as well as international and embassy schools.
The SEC source said that many private schools have already been given grace periods to take remedial action and comply with regulations.
Action will be taken against them once the grace period is over, said the source.
The Peninsula
