Private international schools in Kuwait have announced that the 2022-2023 academic year would begin in a phased manner from Sunday 28 August to Tuesday 30 August. They added that despite the hike in prices of everything, the tuition fees for the next academic year will not be increased.
Announcing this, President of the Private Schools Union, Noura Al-Ghanim, said that the shortage of teaching and non-teaching personnel in some Arab and foreign schools continues unabated. In this regard she urged the concerned authorities to take measures to allow workers in the educational and health sectors to bring in their families, thereby facilitating the process of recruiting new foreign workers.
She explained that many foreign teachers refuse to return to Kuwait without their families, and that prevailing government decisions do not allow entry of the families of teachers, except in some exceptional cases. Al-Ghanim added that educational institutions are not about a teacher and director only, but need other workers, as they need security guards, cleaners, bus drivers, maintenance staff and other workers. However, the cost of labor currently available in Kuwait “is very high, and many are not qualified to work in schools.”
Al-Ghanim praised the great response of the Ministry of Interior and the Public Authority of Manpower during the COVID-19 crisis, hoping that this flexibility will remain in the recruitment of foreign workers to work in private schools, and that the foreign teacher and his wife, if they work in Kuwait, be allowed to bring in their children over the age of 14, stressing that it is not possible for the teacher and his wife to come and leave their 15 and 16-year-old children alone.
On the subject of tuition fees not being increased, it is interesting to note that
foreign schools have to abide by Ministerial Resolution No. 52/2021 which was
approved by the Ministry of Education in 2021. The resolution also warns of
penalties being applied in case schools violate the tuition-fee structure approved by
the resolution.
According to Resolution No 52/2021, each student of the school should be provided with a list specifying the tuition fees owed by the guardian, the system for payment, their value and due dates. Private schools are entitled to charge registration fees for the academic year 2022-2023 that are deducted from the tuition fees owed by the student for the academic year, which is KD50 per student in Arab schools and foreign schools with the Pakistani, Indian and Filipino curriculum, and KD100 per student in other foreign schools.