Some private schools have been accused of charging parents under the guise of “miscellaneous expenses,” following a Ministry of Education ban on hiking the fees.

Parents have pointed out that the schools have created additional costs for sports and other activities such as vocational or arts classes that parents must be paid at the time of registration of the child’s name.

The ministry recently imposed a ban on increasing the school fees following after many parents complained against the steep cost of education in private schools.

Many schools have now been found to have restructured their fees to keep increasing their prices, drawing even more complaints from disgruntled parents.

Some schools said that the increase in fees has occurred because ‘Hadaf’, the Human Resource Development Fund, ceased its support to them and that they need funds to run the institutions and maintain quality.

Many parents pointed out that they were notified during the registration period that SR1,000 would be automatically added to the school fees, which was to be allocated to student activities, books and sports uniform for boys.

However, Ayesha Faisal, principal of a private school, said that extracurricular activities exhaust the school budget. Hence, many schools had no choice but to allocate between SR500 and SR1000 for such activities.