KUWAIT CITY, Sept 8: More than 30 private schools have failed to renew their licenses and rental contracts due to the licensing and rental crisis -- a first in the history of the private educational sector in the country, reports Al-Rai daily quoting Private Schools Union President Noura Al-Ghanim. According to Al-Ghanim, the crisis also led to the inability of the affected private schools to renew the residency permits of their employees; prompting many educational institutions to submit complaints to the union. She said the non-renewal of licenses caused several problems, the worst of which is the inability to renew the residency permits of employees.

She pointed out that renewing a school’s license for one year is not enough to obtain residency permits for employees with a validity period of two or three years; especially the foreign schools that sign employment contracts with foreign teachers for at least two years, since the teachers do not want to leave their home countries and work here for just one year or a few months. She added “There is obstruction in the Ministry of Education and negligence in terms of the decision-making process of its officials. This will lead to the migration of competent staff. It takes only one email for the new teachers to go to neighboring countries that are keen on attracting qualified academic staff.

This entire situation is the result of the action of the previous administration in the ministry, as they emptied the Private Education Department of professionals and left everything in the hands of unqualified officials who do not understand the mechanism of work in private schools.” She hoped that the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research and acting Minister of Education Dr. Nader Al-Jalal would fix the situation and put everything back to its proper place.