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Satyendra Pathak
Doha
AS frequent increase in tuition fees remains a major burden for a large number of Indian parents in Qatar, officials of many Indian schools, which have been allowed to hike the fees this year, say the hike is not substantial enough to meet their growing expenses.
Inquiries have revealed that DPS Modern Indian School (DPS-MIS), Doha Modern Indian School (DMIS), Olive International School and Ideal Indian School have got the permission to increase fees from the authorities concerned this year.
However, parents of children studying in most of these schools have reportedly not received an official communication from the school authorities in this regard.
While DMIS has got permission to increase overall fee of a student by six percent, the other three schools have been allowed to increase the fees by QR500 per student annually.
The increased fees are effective from April 1 this year, according to the school officials.
A top official of DPS-MIS said that the permission for an annual hike of QR500 per student is far below the amount the school had applied for to meet its growing expenses.
"The hike is too little to meet our expenses. The additional annual cost we incur on increasing salaries of staff and teachers, rents of staff accommodation and school maintenance cannot be met with this kind of fee hike," the official said.
Compared to schools of other nationalities, the official said, fees at Indian schools are very low while the expenses are the same.
Ideal Indian School Principal Syed Shoukath Ali said he expected granting of a much bigger hike in fees given the fact that the school got Qatar National School Accreditation (QNSA) recently.
"Fees at Ideal Indian School are the lowest among all the Indian schools in Qatar. Even the newest of Indian schools have much higher fees compared to us. Despite this we got permission for an annual increase of QR500 per student. This will not serve our purpose," Ali said.
DMIS Principal Rakesh Singh Tomar said the permitted fee hikes will not be enough to meet the school's growing expenses.
Meanwhile, many parents have expressed concern over frequent fee hikes, a number of whom are yet to be informed about the latest increase.
"I have no information about the fee hike of my son. The school is yet to communicate to me about it. We are always overburdened," parent of a DPS-MIS student said.
When contacted, an official of the school said that the increased fee will be collected from the second term."The second term fee will also include the arrear from the first term," the official said.
Although other schools are claiming to have communicated parents about the fee hikes, many parents said they have no such information.
Contrary to the claims of Ideal Indian School that all parents have been communicated though SMS and e-mails about the fee hike, parent of a school student said he had no such information.
DMIS principal said that details of the new fee structures are on the school's website. Besides, the parents have also been informed about the fee hike through SMS and e-mails, the principal said.
Principals of other prominent Indian schools like Birla Public School and Bhavans Public School, however, said that there will be no fee hikes in their schools in the current academic year.
