Tag Archives: arabian business

Mission Impossible? Rehabilitating the image of the UAE’s expat education system…

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The question used to be who’d be a teacher. Today it’s more likely be to who’d be a school owner in the UAE? The country’s private education system has been under attack recently for the cost of educating (mainly) expatriate children. There was a wonderful article written by Arabian Business Editor Courtney Trenwith about the issue of high school fees in the UAE, and an apt comparison was made between secondary education in the UAE and tertiary education back in the United Kingdom.

An Arabian Business investigation last month revealed the startling fact that it costs more to send a child to some Dubai schools than a British university.

Fees for a three-year old are as high as AED55,000 (US$15,000) per year, while they escalate to AED69,283 for a typical child aged six to nine, to AED79,733 for many ten to 13-year olds and as much as AED96,140 for the most expensive secondary schools.

Meanwhile, a year’s tuition at universities such as Cambridge and Oxford is less than AED53,000. Until recently, UK university fees were even cheaper.

One of the largest private education firms is GEMS, which claims to educate over 110,000 children and be the leading Kindergarten to Grade 12 private education operator in the world. In December of 2012 GEMS announced that it would close Westminster School in Dubai, which caters to 4,800 pupils from ages five to 18-years old.

The issue which has been covered extensively by the online portal and business publication Arabian Business has caused an uproar with parents who are naturally concerned about the disruption to their children’s education. In a letter sent to parents which was published by Arabian Business, GEMS said the Westminster School would shut in June 2014 with students being given priority placement in other GEMS institutions.

“In recent times our ability to invest the resources required to produce the improvements needed, both educationally and in infrastructure, have been severely restricted because of the current fee structure… We simply cannot offer a high quality education at this level that we see as our duty to provide. Indeed, salary increases during the same period have been at a level higher than any fee awards,” wrote GEMS executive director Dino Varkey to parents.

And now we come to the issue of communications. There are few subjects as sensitive as education, especially when it is for your own children. As the largest company in the industry and one which seems to be making the most headlines, GEMS should realize it needs to do more in terms of its messaging. The company is currently looking to hire a PR and communications manager in Dubai through LinkedIn (if you’re interested in Mission Impossible do click through here).

The question I’d pose to GEMS is how can anyone justify charging more for a year in high school than for a year in university? As there’s little to no public schooling system here for expatriates (in theory an expatriate child can go to a government school but fees will still apply) what are parents to do apart from swallow the bitter pill? But will that help GEMS and the other companies in the long-run? Isn’t the issue more than simply looking at how to spin the company line on high educational costs and school closures? Isn’t this more about the fundamentals of the business, which need reassessing?

The very same Dino Varkey told Arabian Business editor Anil Bhoyrul in an interview in March 2011 that:

“The ambition that we work towards is five million students by 2024. If we got to the five million number as a conservative [estimate] we would be a $60bn company; we would be employing 450,000 teachers, 55,000 senior leaders – that’s the size of organisation that we are trying to build. ”

In the meantime I spotted this recently in a book store in Dubai. As always, if you don’t keep the customer happy someone else will muscle in and try to offer a better service at the same or a lower cost regardless of your communications strategy.

There's always an alternative but would your child be happier and better off boarding in the UK than going to school in Dubai? And would it be cheaper?

There’s always an alternative but would your child be happier and better off boarding in the UK than going to school in Dubai? And would it be cheaper?

To #socialmedia or not to social media – #Gulf newspapers say yes, Gulf governments say no

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The last twelve months have been a defining year for social media across the Middle East. Citizen journalism has flourished. Most of the mainstream media publications have also adopted or begun to adopt social media as another channel to reach the general public.

The first adopters were media outlets in the UAE, particularly those who were already well established digital media. You have the likes of arabianbusiness.com who tweet at @ArabianBusiness – the site has over 27,000 tweets and 13,000 followers on Twitter and almost 3,500 likes on Facebook. Dubai’s largest English-language newspaper Gulf News which tweets at @gulf_news, has over 21,000 followers on Twitter. Abu Dhabi’s The National has a number of prolific social media users on its writing staff, including @ben_flanagan…

…and @amna_alhaddad

Interesting for those based outside of the UAE is how media re now turning to Twitter and Facebook. Saudi’s largest English-language publication, the Arab News, has long had a Facebook site. Arab News has more likes than Arabian Business. Rival publication Saudi Gazette has a Twitter feed on its site, and recently launched its Twitter handle, @TheSaudiGazette, last month.

Similarly in Bahrain, its largest English-language newspaper the Gulf Daily News now has Twitter and Facebook aggregator tools on every newspage. We’ll doubtless see more media using social networks to reach a wider audience.

While the Gulf’s media is moving ahead with social media, the region’s governments are clamping down on what could be termed anonymous social media users probably due to the role that social media has played in the Arab Spring.

Bahrain was the first to propose legislation. The country’s parliament discussed new punishments for cybercrime that include 10-year prison sentences and fines of up to 300,000 Bahraini Dinars. Kuwait and UAE are following suit. Both countries have questioned and/or detained bloggers of late for varying reasons. One article this week in Kuwait’s media suggested that the country could ban anonymous social media activity.

UAE officials have suggested that anyone caught using social media ‘irresponsibly’ will be punished.

Will the drive to regulate social media in the Gulf work? Can’t wait to find out!