Private schools refuse to refund seat reservation fee for withdrawn students

Parents of students said that private schools refuse to refund the seat reservation fees for the new academic year, despite their submission of a request to withdraw the file and transfer to another school, indicating that the schools are delaying their response, despite their sending an email to the school since the beginning of August, stating that their children will not continue to be registered in the school. Meanwhile, administrators indicated that if a student withdraws from the school, the school may retain the re-registration fee or a specific amount of fees, or the full tuition fees in specific cases.

In detail, the guardian of two students in the seventh and fourth grades, Sufyan Muhammad, said, “Last April, I paid Dh2,500 to reserve a seat for the 2024-2025 academic year. At the same time, I had submitted a registration application to a new school that was closer to my place of residence and had a higher rating in the private schools classification issued by the Department of Education and Knowledge.” He pointed out that at the beginning of this August, he received an email with approval from the new school, so he informed the first school that his children would not continue, but it refused to return the seat reservation fees.

A father of students in a private school, one of whose sons was accepted into a public school, reported that the school refused to transfer the registration fees for the transferred student to the remaining tuition fees for the rest of his siblings, and asked him to pay the fees separately, and assured him that the registration fee is non-refundable.

The mother of a ninth-grade student indicated that after paying the fees for the first semester of the 2024-2025 academic year, last July, she decided to transfer her daughter from her school, which offers a British curriculum, to a school that offers a ministerial curriculum, due to circumstances that befell the family. When she went to the school to submit a transfer request and request the return of the paid fees, the school informed her that the transfer was approved, but that the return of the fees was subject to criteria that would be reviewed first and responded to. However, despite the passage of more than two weeks and the repetition of her request, she did not receive any response from the school.

In contrast, officials in private schools confirmed that the school has the right to keep the registration or re-registration fee if the student does not enroll in the school and the guardian does not inform the school of this in writing before the start of the actual school year with sufficient time, indicating that the decision not to continue the student in the school before the start of the new academic year by a short period of time, incurs financial losses for the school and increases the number of vacant seats, especially since schools ask parents to determine their position on the student’s continuation in the school next year from the beginning of February, and based on their decisions, the door is opened for transfer and other students are accepted.

For its part, the Department of Education and Knowledge clarified that the school may collect or return the student registration fee within four months before the start of the academic year, provided that it is subsequently deducted from the approved school fees, and this amount does not exceed 5% of the approved tuition fees. The school has the right to retain the registration fee if the student joins the school on any day or days of the first week of the semester, or if the student does not join the school and the guardian does not inform the school of this in writing before the actual start of the school with sufficient time, and the school is obligated to return the registration fee in full to the guardian if the student does not join the school due to the lack of a seat.

The department indicated in the Private Schools Policy Guide that the school may retain or refund part of the tuition fees in four cases, including if the student is enrolled in the school for any period of the first week of the semester, or if the student does not enroll in the school and the guardian does not inform the school of this in writing before the actual start of the school year with sufficient time, in which case the school has the right to retain or return the registration fee. The second case is if the student is enrolled in the school for one to three weeks in the semester, in which case the school has the right to retain the value of a full month of tuition fees.

The department pointed out that the third case in which the school is entitled to retain an amount of the fees is if the student attends the school for a period exceeding three weeks to a maximum of six weeks in the semester, whereby the school has the right to retain the value of two full months of tuition fees, noting that the fourth case is related to the student attending the school for a period exceeding six weeks in the semester, whereby the school has the right to retain the full value of the tuition fees for the semester.

The department confirmed that these cases apply to new students and students who registered after the start of the semester. Official holidays and days of absence are calculated from the duration of the week, and the value of one month’s fees should be estimated from the total value of tuition fees, divided over 10 months. The guardian has the right to recover the full fees for school books and school uniform for the student if they are not used, while school transportation fees are refunded, following the same method used to refund tuition fees. The department confirmed that the school administration must inform parents in writing of these conditions upon registration or re-registration, ideally through a written agreement between the guardian and the school.

“Education and knowledge”:

The school may collect or return the student registration fee within four months before the start of the academic year.