Egyptian Minister of Education Tarek Shawki has announced that he will place a limit on the increases that international and private schools are set to place on their tuition fees.
The increase is inevitable given the fact that these schools – like any private businesses – want to mitigate the negative consequences that they incurred due to the floatation of the Egyptian pound, this past November.
Indeed, international schools with foreign staff members have been especially hit by the effects of the floatation. Given the fear faced by some parents, however, that the schools will place disproportionately high increases on their tuition fees, the Minister of Education has decided to interfere.
According to Youm7, several sources from the Ministry of Education have corroborated Shawki’s intervention, and added that he the ministry will evaluate the quality of education.
From there, the ministry will determine the minimum increase required to maintain this quality of education. That being said, Shawki has capped tuition increases at a range of 7-15%. In other words, the maximum factor of increase that the ministry can set upon evaluating any given private school is 15%.
This, of course, means that the schools who had originally planned to increase tuition by a factor of 20% are fighting Shawki’s ministerial intervention. This fight originates from a fear that has been associated with the outcomes of the Ministry of Education’s previous interventions.
Specifically, the fear originates from the fact that the International School of Choueifat and The American International School were placed under tight financial and administrative supervision by the El Hilali El Sherbini –the previous Minister of Education- just this past year.
According to Enterprise, international schools have actually announced, this past January, that they prefer to be under the supervision of the Ministry of Investment.
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