The Education Ministry’s move to review private school fees may soon lead to a 50 percent reduction in tuition, Arabic daily Al-Watan reported. According to the report published this week, the ministry will soon begin classifying schools according to the fees they charged. This is in line with a recent directive of the Council of Ministers. According to ministry sources, the ministry will revoke licenses of schools that fail to comply with the fee reduction orders when they come.
A meeting to discuss details of the classification of schools and their fee structure will be held at the ministry headquarters next week. Officials from the ministries of Education and Commerce, members of the committees concerned at the chambers of commerce and industry, and private school owners will attend the meeting.
According to sources at the ministry, there is a possibility for classification of schools into four categories of A, B, C and D. The first category is for the elementary schools and the fee structure would be between SR 5,000 and SR 25,000. Intermediate schools would be classified in the B category with a fee structure of between SR 7,000 and SR 30,000, while the C category is for secondary schools with a fee ranging between SR 10,000 and SR 35,000.
The fourth category would be exclusively for private schools, the sources said while adding that the classification would help reduce the exorbitant fee charged by some private schools.
The sources also pointed out that the ministry had made its own classification of private schools in the Kingdom and presented it to the Council of Ministers for its approval. The Supreme Committee would publish the new classification and the fee structure of each school on its website once it is ready for publication.
There will be 43 branch committees in various regions. They will be under the control of a Supreme Committee headed by Muhammad Al-Otaiby, director general of private and foreign education at the ministry.
