Call of the Nation – Zizi Estefan
From July 2025 to July 2026, the price index in Lebanon increased by 15.69%, according to the Central Statistics Administration, and this number had to have direct repercussions on all sectors, including the schools and education sector, which faces major challenges with the start of the new academic year. A sector is complaining, and on the other hand, people are groaning under financial burdens that are almost breaking their backs, and professors are demanding fair rights. A confrontation that passes smoothly and cooperatively at times, and takes on a more intense dimension at other times. Everyone is in trouble, albeit to varying degrees, and the Ministry of Education is almost absent from the dilemmas of private education.
Parents had barely recovered from the shock of electricity generator prices for the month of July, when another earth-shattering shock came to them, represented by an increase in tuition fees in a large number of schools before the start of the first semester. This was not the only burden facing them. Rather, it brought with it an increase in everything related to returning to school, from books to school uniforms, to stationery, school bags, and even “lunchboxes,” all the way to the biggest catastrophe, which is the cost of school transportation, which escalated with the rise in the price of gasoline. An increase that schools justified by rising prices and improving teachers’ salaries, while the parents’ committees saw it as arbitrary, circumventing the laws, and unfair to the families.
The head of the Union of Parent Committees in Private Schools, Lama Al-Taweel, confirmed in an interview with “Nidaa Al-Watan” that the majority of private schools imposed an increase in tuition fees in a scenario that is repeated every year without any intervention from the Minister of Education, nor from the House of Representatives to hold the minister accountable when he does not carry out his duties. How can the Ministry of Education allow the approval of an increase in tuition fees before the school budget is studied by the parent committees in the first semester? Al-Taweel says that some schools argue that the parent committees have approved the increase, but legally these committees do not have the right to approve any increase before approving the school budget in the first semester. This budget is submitted by the school to the Financial Commission in the Parents Committee, and includes the operating expenses of the school and salaries and wages for teachers and employees. The Finance Commission, after studying and approving the costs, divides them by the number of students, thus determining the value of the school tuition, and schools cannot determine the increase in advance before the start of the school year. If the committee objects to the budget and does not sign it, it is sent to the Special Education Department in the Ministry of Education to be audited and the installment determined in accordance with Article 13 of Law 515. If the school does not respond, the case is transferred to the Educational Arbitration Council, that is, the educational judiciary, which saw the light today after 15 years of demands for its establishment.
The battle of fees between schools and parents
On the ground, and according to what parents are discussing, the proposed increases range between 15 and 30%, so that tuition fees now range between $1,700 and $3,000 for small schools, and between $3,000 and $5,000 for middle schools, while they easily exceed the threshold of $8,000 in high-level schools. This is not the only thing that residents are complaining about. Rather, the “autocars” constitute a major burden, after the increase in the price of gasoline between last July and July of this year reached about 68%.
One of the mothers says that the problem also lies in changing the copies of books from one year to the next, so that younger students do not benefit from the books of their older brothers, and that is in agreement between schools and publishing houses. This is in addition to the prices of foreign books, especially French ones, which have risen significantly for several reasons, including the cost of shipping.
As for school uniforms, there is no problem, as some schools contract with well-known local brands and price accordingly, so that the price of a “hoodie” in one school exceeded $65. But these violations cannot be generalized to all schools, as some of them refused to renew copies of books, and decided to standardize school uniforms and adopt Chinese manufacture to maintain a reasonable price, so that the brothers could benefit from it, as the head sister of one of the well-known Catholic schools says.
Schools that imposed tuition increases argue that they were forced to do so in order to be able to give teachers 100% of the value of their salaries in 2019. However, the head of the teachers’ union, Nima Mahfouz, stated on more than one occasion that teachers’ salaries have not reached what they were previously, and this is confirmed by one of the teachers, saying that their salaries increased gradually three years ago, and today they have reached 80%, and despite the promises of the school administration, whose tuition fees have returned to what they were. Therefore, before the crisis, salaries had not yet returned to their previous value.
Can educational arbitration boards be the solution?
For her part, Lama Al-Taweel says that schools, in addition to claiming an increase in teachers’ salaries and an increase in the price of diesel and operational costs, complain that many families did not pay the full installments last year. Here, Al-Taweel confirms that the school can go to the educational judiciary to obtain its rights, and not hold the remaining parents responsible for this injustice. It should be noted that the educational judiciary is a quick judiciary and is present in all regions, and schools and parent committees, as well as guardians, can turn to it to resolve disputes among themselves.
But if the judiciary does justice to those affected, despite the pressure sometimes exerted on some judges, then the complaints submitted to the Ministry of Education face political and religious pressures, and do not get anywhere, according to what the head of the Union of Parent Committees in Private Schools says. She confirms that the Minister of Education is called upon today to issue a decision prohibiting any increase in tuition fees before approving the school budget, but the constant argument is that the Department of Private Education in the Ministry does not have sufficient human resources to scrutinize the budgets of private schools, and in the absence of actual monitoring, the latter imposes random, unjustified increases, and often refrains from handing over the restrictions to the parent committees for serious study. Thus, everyone revolves in a vicious circle from which there is no way out.
A small number of private schools have not imposed any increase yet in the current year, as they imposed an increase last year. In this context, Maha Qassem, the director of a private school, says that the increase in tuition this year in particular is a justified and necessary increase, and it is not possible to claim, as is usual, school greed. There is no doubt that there are schools that have imposed high increases of more than 30 or 35%, and these are in fact exaggerated and unjustified increases, but schools are forced to take into account the cost of all operating requirements, without this being an excuse to collect more profits.
Increasing costs and rising premiums
The increase made by the school, according to Qasim, is imposed by increasing the wages of its teachers and employees, in order to maintain them and avoid their transfer to other larger and more important schools that pay more. Also, there is a very important factor, which is the percentage that schools pay into the compensation fund after wages increased. The minimum has risen to 28 million, and it can reach 45 million or even 65 million. The school pays 12.5% for teachers and 25% for employees to the compensation fund. This difference, which exceeds 100%, and which the school pays to the guarantee fund and the compensation fund, can only be covered by the premiums.
To this are added the operational costs, maintenance, guarding, the high cost of gasoline and diesel, and the cost of electricity, especially generators. Although the price of gasoline is not directly included in the installments, it affects the transportation allowance that teachers receive, which is also expected to rise with the rise in the price of gasoline. With the introduction of technology into the curriculum, schools have been forced to introduce artificial intelligence and robotics into their equipment, which imposes a cost per student of approximately $100. The cost of purchasing the electronic platforms used by the school, such as e-school, and allocating them to each student has also increased.
Qasim goes on to list all the costs that have increased for schools, including insurance, which has increased by nearly two-thirds compared to before. The number of students in schools has also begun to decline due to the deterioration of the financial situation of the parents and their inability to bear the cost of increased tuition fees, which prompts them to move to public schools.
When the number of students decreases, the budget is distributed to those who remain, and thus the tuition fees for them rise, so that the school can cover the operating cost, which has not changed, but has increased.
The Ministry of Education seems to be standing idly by, with no role or contribution to private schools. It enacts laws and threatens schools that it will not accept any unjustified increases, but in reality it does not take any practical or disciplinary action, nor does it conduct inspections or monitoring, which reinforces educational chaos and makes every school behave as it pleases.
Here, it must be noted that, despite the harsh conditions experienced by several Lebanese regions, the schools there did not take into account the situation of the families as expected, and some Catholic schools in the south demanded full tuition, despite the cessation of studies for long periods, while the Mahdi schools affiliated with Hezbollah refused to register students for the current year unless they paid the previous year’s tuition in full.
Between the country’s situation and the rampant high prices in it, and between school administrations and teachers’ demands, parents seem to be the weakest link, and returning to school seems to be a nightmare, the worst of which is that it is inevitable and has no alternative.
