The chairman of Dubai’s largest school operator has threatened to close a number of schools unless it is allowed to raise fees.
Sunny Varkey, the chairman of the operator, GEMS Education, said in a letter, reported by the National on Tuesday, that some old Indian schools had been “driven to breaking point” and standards could not be maintained with current funding levels.
The letter, addressed to Dubai’s Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA), comes just weeks after the authority issued a ban to private schools preventing them from raising fees.
“Consequently, it is highly likely that we will have no choice but to begin to close down unviable schools over the next two years,” the letter was quoted as saying.
GEMS runs a number of schools in Dubai, some of which are up to 40 years old and in need of repair. The firm said its operating costs have risen by 57 percent over the last six years, while tuition fees have only risen 27 percent during that time.
“That’s a 30 percent disparity. We don’t have the flexibility to be sensitive to a downturn,” Dino Varkey, senior director of business operations, told Arabian Business during an earlier interview.
“People seem to forget that education is one of two price-regulated industries in the UAE. For the last four to five years we’ve been capped on our price, while all of our costs were allowed to rise unchecked. None were subsidised.”
Varkey told the National some of his schools charge fees of around AED5,000 (US$1,360) a year, much less than the AED15,000 on average charged by new schools with the same catchment.
Mohammed Darwish, the chief of the regulations and compliance commission at the KHDA, told the paper a response to the letter was being drafted.
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