Dubai: Delhi Private School (DPS) Academy at Dubai International Academic City (DIAC) has decided to refund the fee money to parents of children leaving the school by the end of October.
The school management sent emails on Wednesday morning to the parents.
The school unexpectedly announced it is closing down in March 2017.
Dinesh Kothari, pro vice-chairman of the school, told Gulf News: “Parents of students leaving by October-end can collect the transfer certificates within the next five working days and the tuition fee will be refunded to them within 15 working days.”
On October 17, the management announced the closure of the school, which follows the Indian Council for School Certificate (ICSE) curriculum.
Around 300 parents accepted the offer of the school to accommodate their children in DPS Sharjah and Dubai branches although both these schools follow the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) curriculum.
The remaining parents were upset as they were told they would forfeit the fee money for the month of November which amounted to a minimum of Dh3,000. In some cases, parents with two children were losing up to Dh6,000.
Kothari also said that DPS Sharjah was adding a new campus by April 2017 to accommodate a rush of students. “We have 450 seats in kindergarten at our Sharjah branch but received 950 applications in a matter of two hours after the registrations were opened. So we have decided to have this new campus which can accommodate up to 1,200 students. This campus, located at the existing Sharjah campus, will be a feeder school to accommodate the rush. Everything else in terms of teachers, teaching the curriculum will continue to be CBSE followed by both the Dubai and Sharjah schools. We have always defended the interests of our students and are acting in their interests. We had to decide to close this DIAC campus as we were running in losses but within 48 hours we offered to accommodate all students from this campus in the other campuses even if it meant expanding those schools.”
Parents who are unwilling to change to the CBSE curriculum can now smoothly get admission in JSS International School at Al Barsha. Kothari said: “We have entered into a written agreement with JSS (I) that they will accommodate all students from this school who wish to continue in the ICSE curriculum and the transition will be very smooth following this agreement.”
James Richard, principal of JSS International, Al Barsha, confirmed the agreement with the DPS management. “By April 2017 we are shifting to a bigger campus on Jumeirah Village Triangle with a capacity of 4,000 students. Right now we have 1,850 students and have accommodated many former students of DPS Academy.”
