Saudi and expatriate families are under financial pressure to choose lower priced schools to educate their children. Private and international schools have announced sharp increases in annual fees starting from the beginning of the 2010 school year. The new increases have forced many families to give up their dream of giving their children a high quality education. Saudi Gazette met with a number of expatriate and Saudi families who are complaining of the sudden increase in school fees. “I have three daughters, each one at a different level, and all of them are studying in an international school in Jeddah. However, as the school has suddenly announced an increase in its fees, I am now forced to consider shifting them to another school,” said Hanan Mohammed, an Egyptian housewife. According to Mohammed, the increase in fees was very large and completely unexpected. “I was paying SR8,000 for my daughter in the primary level, but suddenly the school informed me that they were increasing the fee to SR 10,000,” added Mohammed. “I could accept this sudden increase if I only had one daughter at that school, but the problem is that I have three daughters at the same school, and I have to pay the new fees for all of them,” she lamented. “My two sons have always studied in private schools, but now the school management is asking me to pay four thousand riyals more in school fees for each of them which I simply cannot afford to do,” said Marawn Al-Youssefi, a Saudi engineer, working in a private company. “Now I am planning to put my two boys in another private school with lower fees, but both of them have refused because they have spent 10 years in their school and do not want to leave it,” he said. Officials of the Private Education Commission at the Jeddah Chamber for Commerce and Industry (JCCI) agreed that there was a need to put limits on the amount that school fees could increase. “Actually there is no particular system or set of rules governing the increase of fees at private schools which makes setting school fees something of a random process,” said Dr. Zuhair Hassan, Member of the JCCI Education Commission. “There are many reasons why schools need to increase the fees that they charge, but unfortunately, parents pay little attention to them,” he added. According to Hassan, the rent of school buildings has increased about 200 percent, and the municipality has asked the owners of schools in old buildings to move to new buildings with better facilities, which of course means paying a much higher rent. Rabe'ah Attar, a school owner and member of the JCCI Private School Owners Commission, explained that it is necessary to increase school fees because of the increase in teachers' salaries and in the cost of teaching equipment and textbooks. “There has been a large increase in the cost of equipment and in teachers' salaries which has led to the sudden increase in school fees,” she said, adding that “There is nothing to control the fees that school owners charge as there are no regulations governing the increasing of school fees.” School fees at private schools are from 5,000 to 8,000 riyals for the primary levels, 9,000 to 11,000 riyals for the intermediate stage and 12,000 to 15,000 riyals for the secondary level, with fees at international schools being much higher.
