Education Ministry looks into private schools’ request for tuition fee increase

AMMAN — A specialised committee at the Ministry of Education is following up with private schools that filed a request to inch up their fees, according to ministry representatives.

The ministry’s spokesperson Ahmad Masaafah told The Jordan Times that “the ministry’s approval is given by a specialised committee tasked with assessing the requests made by certain private schools that want to impose the increases”.

In a statement made available to The Jordan Times, director of the ministry’s Private Education Department Reema Zreiqat said that the ministry has until now approved the requests of 27 private schools to increase their tuition fees by 3 per cent, noting that the total number of schools that applied reached 70 schools.

She said that “the ministry’s approval is granted, provided that the school meets certain conditions that are deemed necessary by the ministry”.

The official said that the ministry follows certain criteria and several different justifications such as the number of full-tuition waivers, scholarships and discounts a certain school has provided its students, as well as the quality and scope of school services, among other factors.

Commenting on the increase in tuition costs in some private schools, Um Ghazi, a mother of three, told The Jordan Times that “we already pay high tuition fees to put our kids in high-performing schools, and year by year the costs were already increasing”.

She said that it is not a negative step to allow “high-performing” private schools to raise fees, in case it would bring students better education, however the criteria followed should be precise and strict.

On the other hand, Nada Jamal, a mother of two, told The Jordan Times, that “it is not logical to have constant increases, we can barely afford to put our children in private schools that have a good to acceptable rating”.