Company offers same quality education as top public schools for half the price
Dubai-based firm plans to make high-class private schooling affordable for 'huge swaths' of the British middle classes.
A for-profit company is setting up private schools that claim to offer the same quality education as top public schools but for half the price.
GEMS Education, based in Dubai, intends to open six fee-paying day schools for boys and girls aged three to 18 in towns and cities across England over the next two years.
The company plans to charge parents between £8,000 and £12,000 a year – about half or a third of the price of some of the country's leading public schools.
Sending a non-boarding teenager to Millfield in Somerset costs £19,500 a year, while King's College School in south-west London charges £17,520.
Mark Labovitch, chief executive officer of GEMS for the UK, Europe and Africa, said "huge swaths" of the British middle classes were keen for the opportunity to send their children to private schools, but could not afford what was on offer. Private school fees had risen well ahead of inflation, he said.
Fees for non-boarding pupils shot up by 27% in UK private schools between 2007 and 2011, according to data from the Independent Schools Council (ISC). Fees for boarders rose by 25%. Last year, average boarding fees were £25,152 a year, while day fees were £11,208.
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... (The Guardian - 2 February)