Fee Increases Approved for 17 Dubai Schools - Report

A senior official of Dubai's school regulator, The Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA), has confirmed that fee increases have been approved for 17 schools for the academic year 2013-2014.

In an interview with the Sharjah based Arabic daily Al Khaleej Mohamed Ahmed Darwish, Chief of Regulations and Compliance Commission, at the KHDA said that the authority had received 31 applications to increase school fees.

Of these 12 were from non-profit private schools and all have been approved. Seven of these had preliminary approval last year, according to the regulations. Parents at two leading British curriculum schools Dubai College and JESS had been informed earlier this year of their intention to seek fee increases for the coming academic year.

The report quoted Darwish as saying that fee applications of the other five for-profit private schools have been approved and the applications of two other schools were still being studied.

The majority of parents in the UAE pay fees themselves (62 percent according to the recently published WhichSchoolAdvisor.com survey) so the news will no doubt evoke heated debate as household budgets are set to be stretched again come next September.

The report claimed that the authority ignored the requests of 14 for-profit private schools because they did not comply with the regulations.