Cape Town - A number of Western Cape schools are battling to pay their bills as parents struggle to pay their children’s school fees in tough economic times.
The situation at one of these schools, Lavender Hill High, is so dire the principal fears the school will run out of money within the next month or two.
Principal Faseeg Manie said the annual school fees were R1 100 per child but “we are lucky if we receive R200”.
Many of the school’s pupils came from primary schools that have been classified as no-fee schools. In terms of national policy, provincial education departments classify schools in five categories called quintiles, based on the relative poverty of the surrounding community. Schools in quintiles 1 to 3 do not charge fees, while schools in quintiles 4 to 5 charge fees.
Lavender Hill High had been classified as a quintile 4 school.
This year, in the Western Cape, no-fee schools receive an allocation of R1 144 per pupil from the department. Quintile 4 schools receive R590 per pupil and Quintile 5 R204 per pupil.
Schools have to use the allocation they receive from the department to purchase learning and teaching material and to cover municipal bills, maintenance and other day-to-day costs.
Over the years, there have been many complaints about this system, including that two schools serving the same community could fall into different categories.
Manie said while the school received much assistance from the Education Department, including a feeding scheme, it couldn’t cover its expenses with the allocation it received from the department and the money it received in school fees. “We are running at a serious loss each month.”
Millicent Merton, a spokeswoman for the Western Cape Education Department said all schools were experiencing different levels of financial difficulty because of the current financial environment in South Africa. “Generally, schools have the option, via the district office, to apply for financial assistance via a bank loan or overdraft facility to assist with cash flow challenges.”
She said the department had introduced additional interventions to support fee-charging schools to alleviate the financial challenges they experience.
Some of these interventions included compensating schools for fee exemptions they had granted to parents and top-up funding, which was assistance to fee charging schools where the sum of school fees plus their allocation from the department amounted to less than the benchmark amount for no-fee schools.
“The governing body of a school is responsible for the collection of school fees, including outstanding school fee debt. Schools are encouraged to introduce a school fee collection policy to manage the collection of outstanding school fees. Effective financial management of limited resources is important and further assistance in this regards is provided by the relevant District Office.”
Cape Argus