DOHA: The Ministry of Education and Higher Education has strict rules in place to curb the fee-hike in private schools, while rolling out plans to increase the availability of seats at more affordable fees.
“The Ministry has received applications from over 100 private schools with a variety of requests, most of them seeking an increase in tuition fees,” Under-Secretary of the Ministry of Education and Higher Education, H E Dr Ibrahim bin Saleh Al Nuaimi told The Peninsula on the sidelines of a Ministry event recently.
He said that authorities concerned are preparing to float tenders for building international schools, revealing another plan to allocate plots of lands for new private schools to ensure sufficient availability of seats.
He added that genuine requests for fee increase from private schools are considered favourably if the requested hike is reasonable. Many requests are rejected as they do not confirm with the rules and regulations which are very stringent.
“The decision of fee-hike is taken on the basis of a thorough study considering the school infrastructure and operational costs among others,” said Al Nuaimi.
He said that a separate committee at the Ministry is handling the requests. “The committee meets on weekly basis to discuss the fees issue of private schools. It has hired specialist firms to review the profits and losses of the schools which requested fee increase,” he added.
He said that the schools are allowed to increase the fees in a bid to cover the operational cost, otherwise they would stop functioning in case of loss. “The government and private schools both are very important to enhance the education level of the country to meet Qatar National Vision 2030,” said Al Nuaimi. “The authorities concerned are preparing to float tenders to build private international schools in Mesaieed, Al Shihaniya and Al Khor,” said Al Nuaimi.
He said that another plan of the Ministry of Education and Higher Education is to help provide plots of land to build new private schools at the places which have more demand like those densely populated and remote areas.
According to the Ministry report, there are 282 private schools and kindergartens in the country, in which a total of 190,644 students are enrolled in the new academic year 2018-19.
