every day
Annual school fee increases are unacceptable!
Sami Al Riyami
reyami@emaratalyoum.comsamialreyami
September 12, 2021
There are private schools in Dubai whose fees are very high, even exaggerated, as the price of tuition fees for a child in kindergarten or primary school is equivalent to the fees of prestigious universities in a country like Britain, for example, and this is a reality, not an imagination or exaggeration.
Specifically, I know a guardian who has a girl studying here in the third grade of primary school. He pays her annual fees that are exactly the same as what he pays for his son’s fees, who is studying at a British university, knowing that the university is ranked among the top ten universities in Britain!
He is not the only one. Another case of a brother. His daughter is studying in kindergarten with a fee of 31,000, and his son in the fifth grade with a fee of 41,000, and he is studying for a doctorate outside the country with a fee of 36,000 dirhams!
There is no doubt that there are other models, with much higher fees, this is a reality we all know, but the important question here is: Why do we see severe overcrowding in front of schools that are known to be very expensive? Why are parents rushing to enroll their children in high-fee schools?! Certainly no one forced them to do so, and certainly if they refrained from enrolling in those expensive schools, they would inevitably have to reduce their fees, it is the law of supply and demand, and if those schools did not witness a high demand, they would not dare raise their prices to this degree!Some believe that the government should intervene, but, in order to be logical, and not emotional, it is very difficult for government agencies to intervene to set certain prices, which all private schools are obligated to do, they cannot, because the principles of the free market are incompatible with such intervention, and because education It has become a trade and an investment, and the companies investing in schools pay high costs to start operating those schools. They cannot be forced to provide the service with small amounts. They certainly cannot do that, otherwise no one will invest in education. Yes, it is a reality, like it or not!
Therefore, the matter is all in the hands of the parents. They are the ones who decide where to go with their children, and the existing schools are different, and the options are many, and not all of them have the same high level of fees. There are good schools with acceptable fees, and there are very expensive ones, so why go towards the expensive ones?!
The government cannot prevent a school from setting its prices, even if the prices are exaggerated, just as it does not prevent any car agency from setting the prices of the categories and types of its cars, but the buyer is the one who decides what he wants, there is a car for two million dirhams, and a car for two hundred thousand dirhams All according to his ability!
The main problem, and this is the one that needs government intervention, lies in increasing the fees in schools on an annual basis, at different rates, and this is unacceptable. It is acceptable for this price to change increasingly, at high rates, and without real reasons in every academic year. This is what should not be acceptable, and this is what government agencies are supposed to interfere in so that things do not become random and go towards a chaos of exaggerations in annual increases!
twitter@samialreyami
reyami@emaratalyoum.com
To read the previous articles of the writer please click on its name.
reyami@emaratalyoum.com