JEDDAH, 4 June 2008 — Foreign residents are complaining about tuition hikes and a new SR500 non-refundable registration fee that private and international schools are charging to ensure seats for children in the next academic year.
Essam Shaaban, an Egyptian parent of a student in a private school in Jeddah, said the fee is a ploy to ensure parents don’t change their minds and switch schools later.
“This is obviously another method of extorting money from parents besides depriving the students their right to change schools later if they so desire,” said Shaaban. “You have no choice but to register in advance or else your child’s name will be struck from the rolls. He will also have to forfeit his registration fee of SR500 if he decides to go to another school in the new academic year.”
Hatem Hussein, another Egyptian parent of a student in an international school in Jeddah, complained that the school decided to hike tuition for the next academic year arguing that other schools decided to do the same to meet the current rising prices.
“This is just an instance of the greediness of school authorities. Why should they raise the fees while the salaries of the teachers have not been hiked?” said Hussein.
Shihab Al-Din, a Pakistani father of two children studying in an international school in Jeddah, said the school management did not announce so far any fees hike. “But I fear the management is waiting until the beginning of the new academic year when the students will be hard pressed to find seats in other schools with lower tuitions,” he said.
An official of an international school in the Rawda neighborhood in Jeddah, who did not want his name published, said that the parents should be prepared for a hike in the school fees next year as the price of every other service is rising.
“In fact the schools are a little late in increasing their fees because they could not do it in the middle of the year when the prices for other goods and services began to shoot up,” he said.
He also indicated that some schools, where children from wealthy families prefer to go, would increase their fees by thousands of riyals.
With regard to the difference in the fee rates in different schools, he said the fee structure in a school depended on the quality of education offered by it.
