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19 March 2024

More Dubai school seats than pupils may equal less fees

Published
By Shuchita Kapur

The mad rush for securing a place for your child may finally come to an end, education experts in the UAE have said.

Recent figures released by the Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA) show that as new schools add more seats, there will be competition for better fee structure.

“This [more schools in Dubai] creates competitiveness among the new private schools in Dubai. Private schools [should give] special packages and promotional offers to attract parents of new and existing students and to occupy the highest rate of seats available,” said Mohammed Ahmed Darwish, Chief of Regulations & Permits Commission (RPC) at KHDA.

An end may already be in sight for those on long waiting lists, says Clive Pierrepont, Director of Communications at Taaleem schools in the UAE.

“This past year has been a game changer with more seats than students in some age groups,” he told Emirates 24|7.

And with several more schools set to open soon, there may be more seats than students in more age-groups, changing the demand-supply equation and putting pressure on schools to adjust their fee structure.

“The offers include attractive instalment packages and discounts for families who have more than one child in the same school. As a result, parents benefit from the competition created amongst private schools in Dubai,” KHDA’s Darwish explained.

As of now, however, getting admission into a good school in Dubai is a hard nut to crack for most children.

Almost always full to the brim with long waiting lists, preference is given to siblings and those with corporate debentures, eating into the total slots available for those applying in the general admission category.

Some students, in fact, stay on their waiting list of some of the more sought-after schools for years.

“My child was on the waiting list of an ‘outstanding’ British curriculum school on Sheikh Zayed Road for three years, after which I did not re-register him,” said an Indian mother, who now sends her child to an IB curriculum school, one in which her child got by stroke of luck, she claims.

This is a situation which many parents in Dubai and the UAE have faced or are still struggling with.

However, as KHDA’s Darwish and Taleem’s Pierrepont note, this scenario may be changing, and with it, ballooning school fees may deflate too.

“There is no doubt that because of not reaching their target numbers, some schools may feel they should entice parents to enrol through offering various schemes and discounts,” says Pierrepont.

Nevertheless, he advises that “parents should be very cautious and wary of such offers as in any walk in life you get what you pay for. To run education effectively is an expensive business, with up to 70 per cent of a school’s fee income being spent on salaries. The quality of a school never exceeds the quality of its teachers, therefore securing and retaining the very best talent should always be the top priority for any responsible school management.”

As new schools enrol, parents will be the big winners. “Parents will benefit in so much as they should be able to secure a school place somewhere for their child,” says the Taleem expert.

“However, the good and outstanding schools, with great reputations and proven track records will always be in high demand and therefore still challenging to secure places in,” he further adds.

According to KHDA, the educational opportunities offered by Dubai’s private schools is growing.

“By the end of the academic year 2015-2016, parents will benefit from more than 63,000 seats in 27 new private schools and by 2017 there will be more than 196 private schools in Dubai with a capacity to reach more than 341,000 students,” it said in a statement.

Each year, the city sees many new schools being added. As per KHDA figures, in the academic years, 2011-12 and 2013-14, 18 new private schools provided some 19,000 seats and in the last academic year alone, parents benefited from 11 new private schools opening their doors with a capacity of more than 25,000 seats.