DUBAI // The owner of one of the emirate’s lowest-ranked Indian-curriculum schools said he will not raise fees until his school earns a higher rating from inspectors.
“Because our aim is not how to make money, our aim is to provide the best service to our students and the community,” said Najeeth Ali Huq, chairman of Gulf Model School.
The school has received an unsatisfactory rating in each of the annual inspections carried out by the Dubai Schools Inspection Bureau since 2012, but Mr Ali Huq said the assessment system is flawed.
“There’s an imbalance,” said Mr Ali Huq, noting many older schools, such as his 30-plus-year-old Gulf Model School, charge low tuition fees between Dh3,000 and Dh10,000 a year, making it difficult for them to offer the same quality of education as schools that can charge up to Dh90,000 per year.
“If you say that two people should participate in a competition, one is having a new Mercedes and one is having an old Toyota and you are telling both of them bring out an outstanding result. The speed and the control is not equal,” said Mr Ali Huq.
The Knowledge and Human Development Authority’s fee framework allows schools that score a rating of unacceptable or satisfactory to raise their fees by the same rate as the education cost index, which is set annually by the Dubai Statistics Centre based on the cost of education and living in the emirate.
Last month, the rate for the 2015-2016 academic year was set at 2.92 per cent, an increase of 1.18 compared to last year. Good schools can increase their fees 1.5 times the education cost index, or by 4.38 per cent, while outstanding schools can increase their fees by 5.84, or twice the index.
Of the 25 Indian-curriculum schools inspected by the KHDAs, two rated as outstanding, eight good, 13 acceptable and two as unsatisfactory. All 25 schools are eligible to apply for a fee increase for the upcoming academic year. The school regulator does not inspect new schools within their first two years of operation.
According to the KHDA, the fee framework is meant to motivate schools to improve their quality of education.
“Increases in school fees are linked to performance in inspections,” said DSIB director Fatma Belrehif. “Outstanding schools are allowed to increase their fees by a greater percentage than lower performing schools.”
But the prospect of increasing fees by a few percentage points is not enough to improve education is the emirate, said Mr Ali Huq.
“The government should take initiative,” said Mr Ali Huq. “For the low fee schools, the government or the KHDA should come out with support and guidance, not only written-paper guidance, some practical guidance plus some training programmes for the teachers and the management.”
Mrs Belrehif said schools that rank poorly are visited more frequently as part of “progress review” inspections, which monitor how schools are working towards meeting the recommendations made in the inspections.
A T, a father on a tenth-grade pupil who has attended private Indian-curriculum schools in Dubai for 10 years, said investing in quality teachers would help to improve the emirate’s education quality.
“They should be allowed to increase their fees if in turn that helps to improve the quality and pay the teachers higher fees,” said the father. “The biggest issue I find in Indian education system currently is the teachers are very poorly paid and by virtue of that, you get very poor quality teachers.”
Nargish Khambatta, principal of Gems Modern Academy, which was one of the two schools to be ranked as outstanding, agreed that attracting and retaining talented teachers is a challenge.
“Indian curriculum schools face exactly the same challenges as all other schools in the region; the ability to recruit and retain outstanding teachers who will support the UAE’s drive to excellence,” said Mrs Khambatta. “Every developed and developing country is experiencing this shortage and we must remain competitive in terms of compensation, professional development and our ability to offer career pathways if we are to attract the best and the brightest to achieve the nation’s goal.”
Mr Ali Huq agreed.
“If we wanted to provide high-quality education, we need quality teachers, highly qualified, experienced and expert teachers,” said Mr Ali Huq.
Raising the fees doesn’t always help, Mr Ali Huq said, because it “offsets to the parents,” many of whom are on low-incomes.
“The KHDA must support to provide a form of training,” said Mr Ali Huq.
rpennington@thenational.ae