Hundreds of parents demanded a meeting with the management behind Rajagiri International School in Al Warqaa, Dubai this Saturday over a general climate of confusion. The school caters for more than a thousand students, but an alleged change in management has caused confusion and outrage among the parents, writes Muaz Shabandri at the Khaleej Times.

“We really don’t know what’s happening at the school. There is a new management and an old management and both of them are at loggerheads over the school’s ownership,” said an unnamed parent.

This Saturday, more than 200 parents gathered at a parent-teacher discussion to inform parents of the developments. And it was announced that the school’s management alleged that the school premises had been sold by the landlord to another group, as stated in a letter issued to the Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA).

“The new group has come to the school asking the senior academic and administrative staff to hand over the school documents to them. According to them, it’s their school and we need to get out of the school,” read the letter issued on November 10.

The letter then went on to describe how the landlord has allegedly ordered the school to vacate in the middle of the academic year without any prior notice.

However, the landlord refutes this. Ahmed Al Jafla, owner of the school property, said:

“We have not asked any student or staff to vacate the school and we will never remove any student from the school. We are working in the best interest of the students to protect their rights.”

A spokesperson from the school’s ‘new management’ backed this up, confirming that the students have not been asked to vacate:

“Currently the school is being managed by Rajagiri and we have not taken up the school’s management. We are waiting for the necessary approvals from the regulatory body and once the documentation is in place we will provide more information,” said the spokesperson.

But a frustrated parent who was at the school said:

“There is a lot of confusion and some of the parent’s want the old management to continue while the others want a new one… As parents, we have been paying the fees regularly and we were never informed of any problems by the school principal or other staff.”

The Regulatory and Compliance commission at the KHDA will now look into the case. The school, which was rated ‘Good’ in the annual school inspection report by the KHDA, offers the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) curriculum.