The Sharjah Private Education Authority has approved an increase in school fees for the next academic year 2023-2024, in varying proportions, according to the results of the “Mastery” program to assess the quality of school performance, announcing that the decision does not include schools with an evaluation below “acceptable” as they are not eligible to increase their fees.
The accreditation comes to set the framework for increasing fees and linking them to the quality of education and service provided by private schools in the emirate.
The recommendations came based on educational outcomes based on school control reports, indicators and standards of student quality of life, satisfaction percentage of stakeholders, school performance, academic achievement, academic commitment rate of the educational institution, and school building efficiency.
The study also included the factors affecting school fees, including inflation rates, the increase in utility prices, the operating cost of the educational institution and the rate of economic growth in the emirate.
Fees are regulated in private schools in Sharjah based on the framework for controlling school fees, which links the evaluation of each private school with the percentage specified for adjusting fees for the next year, as private schools that have obtained an “excellent” evaluation have the right to raise their fees to a maximum of 5 percent, while schools can Those with a “very good” rating raised their fees by 3.75 percent. As for those with a “good” rating, they can raise their fees by 2.5 percent, and those with an “acceptable” rating are entitled to raise their fees by 1.25 percent. As for the schools that were evaluated as weak or very weak, they are not entitled to raise their fees.
The authority stated that schools that meet the conditions have the right to submit a request to raise their fees every two academic years, provided that the submission is through a dedicated platform in the authority, where the application is studied after receiving it based on the results of performance evaluation and in proportion to the rate of economic inflation and other documents and justifications provided by schools to support their request. Accordingly, the application will be approved or rejected.
These ratios were adopted within several tracks, including evaluation mechanisms that followed the field visits carried out by the Authority to private schools to determine their levels and know the areas of need for improvement and strengths to build upon and enable them and improve the quality of their outputs on the one hand, and to determine the issue of raising fees or preventing them according to the results of the evaluation, in addition to the Authority’s endeavor to achieve Balance in school fees to ensure their rights and not constitute a burden on parents.
The Authority affirmed that the Emirate of Sharjah is proceeding with an escalating developmental pace in the educational field tools, including teaching methods, mechanisms for providing curricula and development plans conducted by private schools, which requires an increase in payments for schools. Thus, the decision to approve fees came to counter any unjustified increase and to guarantee the school’s right to increase fees in accordance with the specified percentage and the applicable controls.
For his part, Ali Al Hosani, Director of the Sharjah Private Education Authority, explained that any decision adopted by the authority comes after a comprehensive study surrounding all matters related to it. An educational environment with which it deserves to gain the advantage of raising fees at the aforementioned rate, stressing that the fee system is one of the priorities of the authority that seeks to devote the right to education for all within specific frameworks that put the interest of the student, the school and parents at the forefront of its concerns.
Al-Hosani indicated that the decision works to enhance the principle of competitiveness among private schools by motivating those who obtained “acceptable” or less to improve their performance in accordance with the standards for the quality of education classification in the authority, stressing that schools wishing to raise their fees and meet the conditions must enter the “Tamam” platform. On the authority’s website and submitting the application through the e-licensing system coordinator, noting that no school has the right to automatically raise its fees without fulfilling all the conditions and obtaining approval from the authority.
The adoption of the school fees rate comes with the aim of determining the mechanisms of school work related to the annual payments due on parents and preventing randomness in fees, which has become an obsession for families who have expressed their concerns on many occasions.
The Authority is keen on regulating school fees and categorically forbids expelling any student, depriving him of taking exams, or stopping him from exercising his right to education due to late payment of school fees due, as it annually issues a circular in this regard to ensure that students exercise their educational rights.
It is noteworthy that the authority announced the adoption of fee-raising rates after it implemented the two phases of its qualitative program “Mastery”, the first phase of which was launched on October 16 and continued until November 2022, and the second phase launched in February to March of this year with the aim of identifying the citizens that need improvement in order to raise The efficiency of the educational system in all private schools in Sharjah and the achievement of distinguished academic outputs.
The Sharjah Private Education Authority seeks to enhance the educational community’s confidence in the services provided, to qualify and train educational cadres to meet the requirements of the future, and to increase investments in the field of education, in addition to annual partnerships aimed at developing skills and closing gaps between basic and university education and the labor market.
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