Soaring school fees are forcing expatriate parents in Dubai to send their children home for schooling, a report has claimed, raising concerns that families may be increasingly discouraged from moving to the UAE.
The Dubai Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which has monitored the cost of consumer goods and services for the past three years, said that the number of Dubai residents aged 10 to 19 in the country was “unusually low”, suggesting that teenagers may be sent away for education.
The problem was most prevalent in the Asian community, for whom the cost of education has grown “much higher” in Dubai than at home, particularly in secondary schools and universities, the Chamber said.
“With the recent price escalations in the cost of education, more and more families are having no choice but face the reality that they cannot afford the cost of education in Dubai, and they have to send their teenage children home for higher education,” it said in its monthly economic bulletin.
However, the Knowledge and Human Development Authority, which regulates school fees in Dubai, said that it may be a lack of school places forcing them to return home.
A spokesman for the KHDA said: “We have received no letters or e-mails from schools or parents that the fees structure has forced them to return to their home country.
“We have a good relationship with our stake-holders, and certainly no school owner has come to us with this problem.”
The spokesman did, however, say that the department was “concerned that parents are returning to their home countries because they cannot find school places for their children in certain stages and in certain curriculum schools”.
Secondary school fees increased by 25.2 per cent this year, the chamber said, while primary school fees rose by 18.7 per cent. University costs increased by 14.2 per cent. The rise was particularly steep considering increases were limited to 2 per cent in primary and secondary schools in 2006.
In 2007, there was an 11.6 per cent average increase for primary schools, and 15.4 per cent for secondary schools.
The chamber estimated that school fees now range from Dh3,000 to Dh58,000.
“The schools here continue to increase the fees and we have no choice but to pay. We can’t register a complaint or any such thing but we just have to pay quietly,” said Shekhar Amin, whose daughter is a grade 4 student studying in a private school in Dubai. “As my daughter grows up, educating her here would become more and more unaffordable.”
“We just plan to educate here for a year longer after which we would return to India. Schools in India are much better and we can get the same education at a much cheaper rate there.”
The KHDA highlighted a shortage of places in English national curriculum schools for ages 16 to 18.
“We are aware that demand is outstripping supply,” the official said. “This is exacerbated by the fact that not all of the new schools scheduled to open this year and next year will do so because of delays in construction, something that is suffered by all sectors in Dubai.”
The KHDA official added that “we work closely with other Government departments to support the growth of education in Dubai and that increased costs does not slow the growth of the school sector. For example we liaised with the Dubai Real Estate Corporation to slowly phase in rent increases that could have affected seven schools dramatically.”
The KHDA assumed responsibility from the Ministry of Education for setting school fees in Dubai last year, allowing institutions to raise their prices by up to 16 per cent.
However any school that did raise tuitions by the maximum was not permitted to raise fees further this year.
Previously, schools were allowed to raise fees by 20 per cent over a three-year period.
An exemption has been granted to embassy, not-for-profit, and internationally accredited schools, which are regulated on a case-by-case basis
According to the KHDA, 43 per cent of schools increased fees in 2007, most by 16 per cent. This year, just 31 per cent of schools were allowed to make further increases, as many reached their quota in 2007.
* additional reporting by Praveen Menon
Kathryn Lewis