Expatriate parents in Bahrain plead for school fees concession

TDT | Manama

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com  

Staff Reporter

A large number of expatriate parents in Bahrain are pleading for school fees discounts after being unable to pay the fees of their children on time.

They are seeking from the Ministry of Education and are presenting a request to issue a directive to reduce the existing school fees at all community schools in Bahrain.

Last year hundreds of parents signed a petition urging the ministry to direct schools to cut existing fees, which according to them are “very high” despite most of the schools slashing the amounts between five and 10 per cent owing to the pandemic situation.

I have hardly any money for daily requirements

Speaking to The Daily Tribune, an Indian expatriate, who has three school-going children, said: “I was successfully running a small business, which was shut down during the beginning of Covid season.

My financial situation is so bad that I have hardly any money for daily requirements.”

The parent said it was his friends who raised money for sending his wife and three children home.

“My son is studying in ninth standard and daughters are in Class Six and Class Four.

The school recently delinked my children from attending online classes from India as their fee was pending.

“Now I need at least BD720 to settle the fee.

And this amount is huge for someone like me who struggles to pay lunch and dinner bills.

“Without paying fees, my children wouldn’t be allowed to sit for annual examinations without which they wouldn’t receive their transfer certificates.

I have no means to earn that money nor I can jeopardise my children’s future.”

We parents did not commit any crime

Another parent, who was employed as a sales manager with a private company and lost his job six months ago, said he doesn’t want to blame the school management for insisting to pay the fees.

“ I very well understand that the school management runs the institution using the fee given by the children.

“But there has to be a provision where the children should be allowed to sit for annual examinations.

 We parents did not commit any crime to be in such a situation.

I urge the authorities to intervene and find a solution. The future of thousands of expatriate students is now at the hands of these managements.

The situation we are facing is not by choice and this fact should be understood by all.”

The flip side

On the flip side, Indian School Bahrain Chairman Prince Natarajan said training guns at school management alone wouldn’t offer any solution.

“We understand the situation well and are seeing things through the prism of humanity.

Our school has been providing fee concessions to eligible students even before the pandemic struck the nation.

“We now have a scheme in place to identify and support parents, who are financially incapable of paying fees.

We have placed parents under different slabs according to the number of children each parent has at our school and their income.

Based on these slabs, we are providing concession and fee waivers to students.

Approach us, says school

“If any parent faces any difficulty in paying the fees, they are free to approach us with supporting documents proving job loss or lack of regular income source.

We are implementing a proper mechanism to address the issue.

For instance, parents of many children who were running cold stores across Bahrain got into dire straits during the lockdown and they approached us for fee discounts.

We inspected these claims, which were found to be true in the majority of cases.

And subsequently, fee discounts were offered.”

Prince Natarajan said there are also many parents who misuse the situation.

“They exploit the situation and keep away from paying the fee despite having the capability to clear dues.

Such parents are proving to cause difficulty for parents of those children who are eligible for fee relaxation or concession.”

The Indian School Bahrain in a press release issued earlier said that it has given a fee concession of BD109,000 to the deserving students including Covid relief assistance during the last financial year.

The New Indian School Bahrain Principal K Gopinath Menon said the situation is hard to handle.

“We have many fee defaulters and we have been offering discounts after finding the cases to be genuine.

But many parents are misusing the situation and we can’t do much about this.”