School fees skyrocket

Parents facing heavy increases in rent and food costs will next month have to struggle with increased school fees.

Leebo Baby, 12, looks through a display of school supplies in Abu Dhabi.

Parents facing heavy increases in rent and food costs will have to struggle with yet another inflationary challenge this month: skyrocketing school fees. Tuition fees have risen up to 50 per cent for some grades at private schools compared with last year amid a national shortage of places.

For some parents, the costs of school uniforms and transporting their children to the classroom have also risen above the country's inflation rate of 11.4 per cent, a 20-year high. The sharp rises have caused some parents to take drastic measures, including deferring the start of their children's education until next year. "Costs have considerably increased and at such an alarming pace," said Usha Benjamin, 33, an Indian expatriate living in Sharjah who has two daughters, aged eight and five, starting school. "Everybody is worried."

School administrators say the tuition increases have been unavoidable, and are tied to the same inflationary spiral that has driven up the cost of everything, in particular housing and food. "The reality in the UAE, with the majority of education being private, is that nearly 100 per cent of school revenue comes from tuition," said Jason McBride, the principal at the GEMS American Academy - Abu Dhabi, one of the few schools that did not raise its tuition fees this year.

"Unfortunately, when inflation is high and the costs of food, housing and transportation skyrockets it impacts families, but it also raises the costs associated with running a school." The cost of bringing in North American-trained teachers and paying them a premium, housing them and transporting them, he said, continued to rise every year, and tuition must follow suit. "If everything is going up, how do schools afford to operate? They have to raise tuition; an unfortunate double whammy to parents," he said.

At GEMS American Academy - Abu Dhabi, parents pay fees of Dh25,000 (US$6,806) for KG1, Dh38,000 for KG2 and Dh53,700 for grades 1 to 5. The American Community School (ACS), one of a handful of internationally accredited schools in the country, has raised fees by 15 per cent this year. Previously, the school had never raised its tuition fees more than five or six per cent in a single year. The reason for the big increase, said Dr George Robinson, superintendent of ACS, is that the school's non-profit status meant it did not have a cushion for when operating costs rose. The school gave teachers a 10 per cent salary increase this year, in addition to making places for more students, which meant hiring more teachers from overseas.

"Rent of apartments for this increase in faculty was very expensive, with the cost of a typical two-bedroom apartment increasing from Dh40,000 to Dh50,000 per year two years ago to Dh160,000 now," said Dr Robinson. At the British School - Al Khubairat, primary school fees have been raised to Dh34,995 from Dh27,600, an increase of 27 per cent, while secondary school charges have been increased 10 per cent to Dh46,995, compared with Dh42,750 the previous year. The Sharjah English School this year put up annual fees for the first foundation year to Dh19,000, from Dh12,390 last year, an increase of 53 per cent.

Most schools are restricted to how much they can raise tuition fees, but parents complain the schools have compensated by raising transportation costs and other charges. The rises have been felt across the spectrum: even parents whose children are in nursery school have seen fees rise considerably. Angela Wells, 35, a British housewife with a son, aged three, and a daughter, aged 10 months, said her son's monthly pre-school fees had increased to Dh1,890 from Dh1,450 last year, but that her husband's company did not provide an education allowance until the children were four years of age.

"I will be working just to pay for my children to go to school," she said. The situation is likely to worsen next year. The Ministry of Education announced in July that schools could raise fees by up to 30 per cent over three years, an even bigger increase than the previously permitted 20 per cent. When the rule changed, Dr Maryam al Ali, director of the ministry's Commission for Private Schools announced that only a small number of Abu Dhabi's 111 private schools would be allowed the full increase.

The policy does not apply in Dubai, where the Knowledge and Human Development Authority controls school fees; many schools there had already raised their fees by 16 per cent last year and are not allowed to do so again this year. A recent cost of living survey, released by an international human resources firm, ranked Dubai and Abu Dhabi as the second- and third-most expensive cities in the region.

Schools say the tuition increases have been driven by sharp increases in their own costs, particularly rent. Those rent costs are also making it difficult for new schools to open or existing institutions to expand. The increased cost of education is also impacting companies operating in the UAE. Iain Burns, vice president of corporate communications at Etihad Airways, said the company recently increased its education allowance for employees with children to account for the rising school fees.

"We knew what we were paying, we did a survey of what school fees cost and what they were going up to. "We budgeted for it, we communicated it to our staff in May, and it goes into effect in September," said Mr Burns. [e-mail] [e-mail]