GEMS Education says 6,000 more have benefited from Covid-19 relief package

The families of an additional 6,000 students have taken advantage of a GEMS Education Covid-19 relief package after being means tested, the company has announced.

The package offers relief for term three fees for parents who have experience reductions income, lost jobs or been placed on unpaid leave.

According to GEMS, discounts on the current term’s frees range from 25 percent all the way up to 100 percent in extreme cases. The average discount currently stands at 33 percent.

In total, the families of more than 26,000 students across the GEMS network will benefit from the initiative, the company said in a statement.

“We are committed to supporting our parents during these challenging times and to continue to pay our teachers and academic staff in full,” said GEMS CEO Dino Varkey. “Our means-tested, targeted approach to providing financial assistance enables us to fulfil both of these commitments, and we firmly believe that we have struck the right balance between the two.”

Over the past few weeks, GEMS has been under intense scrutiny from some parents, who have called on the company to do more  to help with fees amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic to alleviate what some have termed ‘rising agony’.

In a petition signed by thousands of parents, parents called for a minimum 30 percent fee reduction for the third term, in which students will remain at home ‘e-learning’ rather than in classrooms.