Education

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Westminster School by Gems Education pushing fees out of parents reach

Westminster School Dubai

Gems Education system Dubai is in another controversy. The Westminster School, a private British curriculum school in Al Ghusais run by Gems Education, has notified parents that it will charge Dh475 per subject for grades nine and higher, and Dh150 per subject for grade six in exam fees.

One parent feared this meant grade nine students who take eight subjects, for example, will have to pay Dh3,800 on top of their new tuition fees of Dh8,459 – equal to 45 per cent of tuition.

The school management has told Gulf News that all international schools charge fees for board examinations separate to the main fees. At the Westminster School it is a charge of Dh475 per exam, per student, which is far cheaper than those charged by the British Council.

Parents, on the other hand, said that there are no board exams in grades six, nine or 11, adding students take British IGCSE (O Level) exams in grade 10, and GCE exams in grade 12 (AS Level) and grade 13 (A Level).

Previously, Gems Education system was in the news for another such controversy of fleecing parents by raising the tuition fees.

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GEMS Education to open private schools in the UK

GEMS Education to open private schools in the UKDubai-based GEMS Education is planning to venture out in the UK by setting up private schools with fees at half the price of top schools in the country.

As reported by Arabian Business, GEMS intends to open six fee-paying day schools for boys and girls aged three to 18 in towns and cities across England over the next two years.

It is said that GEMS aims to charge parents between £8,000 and £12,000 a year – about half or a third of the price of some of the country’s leading public schools.

Mark Labovitch, chief executive officer of GEMS for the UK, Europe and Africa, said it was targeting “huge swaths” of the British middle classes who could not afford private school fees.

Fees for non-boarding pupils shot up by 27 percent in UK private schools between 2007 and 2011, according to data from the Independent Schools Council (ISC).

The location of the GEMS schools has not yet been finalised, but Labovitch told the paper there were parts of the country that were under-served by the number of private schools they had.

It should be noted that GEMS had some negative press in UAE when its fees sky rocketed some time back.

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Dubai shuts down three free zone universities

Knowledge Village Dubai

Three universities operating from free zones in Dubai have been closed, while six others are under scrutiny, a top official from Knowledge and Human Development Authority said.

Mohammed Darwish, head of the Systems and Control Section at the authority, said that they cancelled the commercial and academic licenses of UEIMS Medical Science University, Mahatma Gandhi University, and International Institute for Management and Technology, Emarat Al Youm reported.

He did not mention the number of students who were affected by these decisions. However, he said the universities were asked to help the students and transfer them to other universities.

“Some of the universities which were closed down or put under test have gone to operate in other emirates which do not follow strict procedures and rules,” he said.

He said the authority had to cancel the licenses of these universities as their programmes did not match the quality of education followed by their mother university.

“Also some of them did not belong to the original universities, and they were just using the names under special agreement with the original universities. This is against our rules as all the universities must be real branches of well-known universities in their mother country. This is a must as the students who graduated from these universities did not get their certificates attested by the mother university, and thus we acted to protect the rights of students.”

Currently, there are 16,000 students studying in 32 international universities and colleges in the free zone areas. Of these, 2,300 UAE national students are studying to get higher degrees.

From: Emirates-247

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