The salary-scale crisis

The Lebanese Parliament passed a salary-scale bill on July 2017 raising the wages of public sector employees before the election. The salary scale also applies to private school teachers, given the existence of a law imposing equality of wages across schools. Private schools reacted by increasing tuition fees, leading to social and economic unrest. In fact, about half of Lebanese people suffer from poverty, and yet despite their poor economic conditions, many parents work hard to place their children in private schools, which typically offer higher academic quality than public schools. Today, the salary-scale bill forced them to shift their children to public schools, reducing the working classes’ chances of moving up the ladder of social progress. Private schools are currently facing bitter choices: raising wages and losing students, or freezing wages and fighting teachers.  

Level of Private Schools at Stake

In order to weather this crisis, some private schools have asked the government to step in and cover the additional cost from the treasury. This proposal provides a short-run solution but will inevitably cause greater problems in the long term. Relying on the government to pay the salaries and wages will have the result that, sooner or later, private schools will have to comply with public supervisory mechanisms and academic criteria imposed by the Ministry of Education. The ministry’s intrusions will affect books, employment, and even student recruitment, making private schools hostage to political decisions and leading to a decline in their academic level, becoming merely copies of public schools.